Several luxury hotels in Shanghai scrambled to throw out dim sum made by a local supplier after finding out it did not have a licence.
Officials refused to renew the factory’s production licence in May because of hygiene concerns at one of its plants.
Officials from the municipal quality supervision bureau on Monday visited six leading hotels supplied by Shanghai Jiabao Food to alert them to violations at the company’s factory in the city’s Minhang district.
The hotels were the Sofitel Shanghai Hyland, Hilton Shanghai, the Fairmont Peace Hotel, InterContinental Shanghai Puxi, Sheraton Shanghai Pudong and Pullman Shanghai Skyway.
A German-run supermarket chain, Metro China, said it had pulled Jiabao products from all its 55 outlets across the mainland.
The production permit for the Minhang plant expired on May 7 and authorities refused to approve an application for renewal because of sanitation concerns, the Oriental Morning Post reported.
A team that visited the factory on Sunday found expired food had been placed alongside fresher products. A label on a box of barbecued pork buns in a refrigerator showed they had been made in December 2010 and should be kept for less than six months. A nearby box of bean cakes had a manufacturing date of June 10.
Quality-inspection officials along with their food and drug administration counterparts visited most of the hotels on Monday to check Jiabao products in their stock. The test results have yet to be released.
Sunny Sheng, a spokeswoman from Sheraton Shanghai Pudong, confirmed yesterday that the hotel had used at least four types of dim sum from Jiabao but stopped selling all of them on Sunday.
“The first time we heard the supplier had a licensing problem was when a reporter called on Sunday. We immediately decided to stop using all Jiabao products due to concerns over food safety,” she said.
Sheng said they had received a fax from Jiabao on Monday saying that products supplied to the hotel came from Jiabao’s other plant, in Haimen, Jiangsu province, and were fine to consume.
But the hotel was not convinced, as previous products from the supplier had carried the address of both plants.
The statement from the Hilton Shanghai said it immediately stopped buying products from Jiabao and they were no longer serving the food as a safety precaution.
A spokeswoman from Fairmont Peace Hotel, who declined to give her name, said it had removed all Jiabao products from its larder and ended the supply contract.
Metro China, which has a few outlets in the city, said that all of its products came from Jiabao’s Haimen branch but it would remove them anyway.
Neither the Shanghai quality inspection nor FDA authorities could be reached for comment yesterday. Phone calls to Jiabao’s Haimen branch went unanswered.
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Luxury Shanghai hotels dump dodgy dim sum
Alice Yan
27 June 2012
Several luxury hotels in Shanghai scrambled to throw out dim sum made by a local supplier after finding out it did not have a licence.
Officials refused to renew the factory’s production licence in May because of hygiene concerns at one of its plants.
Officials from the municipal quality supervision bureau on Monday visited six leading hotels supplied by Shanghai Jiabao Food to alert them to violations at the company’s factory in the city’s Minhang district.
The hotels were the Sofitel Shanghai Hyland, Hilton Shanghai, the Fairmont Peace Hotel, InterContinental Shanghai Puxi, Sheraton Shanghai Pudong and Pullman Shanghai Skyway.
A German-run supermarket chain, Metro China, said it had pulled Jiabao products from all its 55 outlets across the mainland.
The production permit for the Minhang plant expired on May 7 and authorities refused to approve an application for renewal because of sanitation concerns, the Oriental Morning Post reported.
A team that visited the factory on Sunday found expired food had been placed alongside fresher products. A label on a box of barbecued pork buns in a refrigerator showed they had been made in December 2010 and should be kept for less than six months. A nearby box of bean cakes had a manufacturing date of June 10.
Quality-inspection officials along with their food and drug administration counterparts visited most of the hotels on Monday to check Jiabao products in their stock. The test results have yet to be released.
Sunny Sheng, a spokeswoman from Sheraton Shanghai Pudong, confirmed yesterday that the hotel had used at least four types of dim sum from Jiabao but stopped selling all of them on Sunday.
“The first time we heard the supplier had a licensing problem was when a reporter called on Sunday. We immediately decided to stop using all Jiabao products due to concerns over food safety,” she said.
Sheng said they had received a fax from Jiabao on Monday saying that products supplied to the hotel came from Jiabao’s other plant, in Haimen, Jiangsu province, and were fine to consume.
But the hotel was not convinced, as previous products from the supplier had carried the address of both plants.
The statement from the Hilton Shanghai said it immediately stopped buying products from Jiabao and they were no longer serving the food as a safety precaution.
A spokeswoman from Fairmont Peace Hotel, who declined to give her name, said it had removed all Jiabao products from its larder and ended the supply contract.
Metro China, which has a few outlets in the city, said that all of its products came from Jiabao’s Haimen branch but it would remove them anyway.
Neither the Shanghai quality inspection nor FDA authorities could be reached for comment yesterday. Phone calls to Jiabao’s Haimen branch went unanswered.
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