McDonald's cheese crackdown: Maharashtra to inspect global fast-food chains
substitutes instead of real cheese in burgers and nuggets at a McDonald's outlet last week, the state of Maharashtra will be inspecting outlets of all global fast-food chains for food regulation violations, Reuters reported citing an official.
The Indian state will run a check for misleading promotion of non-cheese items as containing cheese after mcdonald's crackdown and also inspect all McDonald's outlets in Maharashtra for the same, widening its scrutiny post crackdown by the state's Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
«We are planning to check all outlets of McDonald's,» Abhimanyu Kale, the FDA chief told Reuters. «We will also take action on other well-known and frequently visited global fast-food chain outlets,» he added, but declined to identify the brands being targeted.
Saurabh Kalra, MD of Westlife, which runs McDonald's in west and south India, said that the company will welcome any inspections and maintains the «highest standards».
The FDA had suspended the licence of a McDonald's outlet in Ahmednagar, leading the chain to remove the term «cheese» from various items. The licence was, however, revoked later.
The regulator alleged that McDonald's used cheese analogues without proper disclosure, misleading consumers into thinking they were consuming real cheese. The state FDA has also pushed the chain to implement corrective actions statewide and possibly nationally.
On the crackdown, Westlife Foodworld had issued a clarification last week saying that it is actively engaging with the competent
