McDonald’s chicken nugget sales in Japan have stalled after a consumer reportedly discovered vinyl inside one of her nuggets whilst dining at a restaurant in the northern prefecture of Aomori.
The offending item came from one of three production facilities based in Thailand that are used by McDonald’s. It’s another blow for the Japanese version of the fast food chain as they’d only recently switched production from China to Thailand following a food scare concerning the Shanghai Husi Food Co. The Chinese based production company was allegedly found to be mixing out-of-date meat with fresh produce when manufacturing fast food items for McDonald’s last year.
Foreign objects in fast food
Unfortunately, Japan isn’t the only country seemingly struggling with foreign objects in McDonald’s food. In 2014, a number of other food safety scares from foreign objects came to light.
A mother of a young toddler in Auckland, New Zealand, says she was horrified in June when she reportedly found two rusty metal rings in a cheeseburger that was was served as part of a Happy Meal to her 2-year old daughter. “She was just eating her cheeseburger when all of a sudden we noticed her coughing quite a lot,” she says. “I didn’t actually know what was happening because she was coughing so much. It was like she was choking – she wasn’t quite, but it was nearly at that stage. It was more than a little bit frightening.”
And in another unhappy Happy Meal story, an Arizona family in the US claimed to have found a razor blade at the bottom of a Happy Meal box. Thankfully the offending item was removed before any items were consumed.
Also in June 2014, a pregnant woman and her fiancé from Iowa in the US claim that their McDouble burgers were laced with marijuana. “I opened the burger and the cheese was just covered with weed,” the unfortunate consumer told the Ottumwa Evening Post. “Once I opened those burgers, you couldn’t smell McDonald’s anymore. You could only smell the illegal drugs that were on it.”. The case is currently under police investigation.
And finally, in October, a Canadian man claimed that he discovered an unexpected surprise when taking the last few sips from a cup of McDonald’s coffee. “I always take the lid off to get my last sip of coffee,” he said. “And when I took the lid off, there was a little bit of a surprise in my coffee cup. It was a dead mouse.”. McDonald’s refute the Canadian man’s claims and issued an official statement after the incident stating that the building was checked immediately and no evidence of pest infestation was found.