McDonald’s And Cargill Say They Didn’t Put Plastic In Japanese McNugget

(Morton Fox)

Things aren’t going well at McDonald’s Japan recently. From the incident where a human tooth turned up in a customer’s food to the shards of plastic found in nuggets and ice cream to the French fry shortage that caused the chain to airlift a metric ton of fries into the country, it’s not surprising that consumers are staying away. Now there’s news about that nugget incident that blames either McDonald’s or the customer for the plastic nugget incident.

The McNugget with the plastic in it came from the chain’s nugget supplier, American agri-giant Cargill. McDonald’s Japan switched to another supplier in Brazil during this nugget crisis. Yet Cargill announced in a statement today that the chicken plant in Thailand where the nugget came from doesn’t use that specific type of plastic. “We are very confident that the plastic film in the nugget occurred outside of our production plant,” a spokesperson for Cargill Meats Thailand said.

Does that mean it happened when the nuggets were cooked at the restaurant? Unlikely, says McDonald’s Japan: they don’t have any reason to use that kind of plastic, either.

McDonald’s Japan says plastic in McNugget not linked to Thai plant [Reuters]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist