<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-999701p1.html">Hong Vo</a>/Shutterstock
Update 12/15/15: Cargill announced that “they are confident the blue, plastic foreign material recently reported in one McDonalds Chicken Nugget in Japan did not originate from Cargill’s production facilities.” The source of the plastic is unknown.
McDonald’s Japan is having a rough start to 2015. Last week, the company apologized after a customer found plastic fragments in an order of Chicken McNuggets, which were thought to have been produced at a Cargill factory in Thailand. McDonald’s pulled out nearly 1 million McNuggets from the factory in one day. The same week, a customer in Misawa found a piece of vinyl in an order of McNuggets.
In a statement about the plastic contamination, company spokesman Takashi Hasegasa said, “We deeply apologize for the trouble we have caused our customers and we are taking quick measures to analyze the cause of the contamination.”
Plastic and vinyl are, sadly, not the only gross items that customers have found in their McDonald’s meals over the past year. In August, the company received a complaint from a customer in Osaka who had found the shard of a human tooth in an order of french fries. It was unclear at press time if the customer was in fact “lovin’ it.“
In July, McDonald’s shut down its poultry supplier in China, Shanghai Husi Food Co, after allegations that the factory had deliberately mixed fresh chicken with expired produce. The meat had then allegedly been shipped to McDonald’s in Japan and Starbucks and Burger King in China.
The summer food scares led McDonald’s Japan sales to drop more than 10 percent every month compared to the previous year, according to CNN. This fiscal year, the golden arches are bracing themselves for the their first net loss in Japan in 11 years.
In an effort to bounce back, McDonald’s Japan launched a sales campaign with discounts, giveaways, and new nuggets made from tofu.
