福喜为何会在中国出事

    过去五周，在华经营的美国快餐企业如坐针毡。

    上周五，丑闻风波掀起了一个新高潮：上海检察机关批捕麦当劳（McDonalds’）最大的肉类食品供应商福喜集团（OSI Group）中国子公司的6位雇员，罪由是他们向麦当劳、肯德基（KFC）和其他在华连锁快餐企业销售过期肉。

    7月底，上海一家电视台曝光上海福喜食品有限公司（Shanghai Husi Food）给过期肉篡改包装生产日期，并使用过期牛肉生产肉饼。之后麦当劳在华餐厅连续3周面临牛肉和鸡肉产品短缺的窘境，中国所在地区的销售额在7月份下跌7%。一时之间，人们在北京都买不到巨无霸了。

    8月初，也就是过期肉事件曝光两周半后，我碰巧遇到了两位来北京出差的福喜集团员工，他们正在对集团旗下中国各地工厂展开紧急检查工作。其中一位员工来自福喜芝加哥地区总部；另一位曾在华中的一家工厂工作过。

    这里面有一位是我大学时期的同窗好友，我不会在此透露他们的姓名。但我们详细地探讨了此次危机。对于为什么会出此纰漏，他们的解释是，作为一家美国公司，福喜集团不知道中国本地经理人在做些什么，有时候也没法搞清楚。中国本地工厂的文件和条例不会从中文翻译成英文，即便翻译了，福喜的美国经理人也不会经常浏览。

    这家公司正在努力解决这些问题，但最近它的中国业务陷入停滞，每天亏损达数百万美元。

    在这起最新的中国食品安全丑闻中，媒体报道分为两派。一派认为，从福喜获得原料供应的麦当劳、肯德基、星巴克（Starbucks）和其他美国餐饮公司是中国掀起打击外资公司风潮下的牺牲品，而此类行动从1年半前中国媒体批评星巴克咖啡定价就开始了。这是为美国品牌辩护的西方人喜欢的论调。

    另一派以中国媒体为主，它们认为，洋快餐在中国大失水准，福喜存在与众多中国本土食品公司一样的食品质量和安全问题。

    与福喜的两位高管谈了一晚之后，有一点很清楚了——中国媒体是对的。福喜有时对于其在中国的经营状况确实一无所知，可能确实存在被指控的问题，但他们对需要做出的改变持开放态度。

    It’s been a wretched five weeks forAmerican fast food in China.

    The humiliation reached a new pitch Friday when prosecutors in Shanghai arrested six employees of the Chinese subsidiary of McDonalds’s largest meat supplier, OSI Group, for selling expired meat to McDonald’s, KFC, and other chains in the country.

    The OSI subsidiary, Shanghai Husi Food, was caught by a Shanghai TV channel in late July re-labelling expired meat packages and using expired beef to make patties. McDonald’s was short on beef and chicken for three weeks in China following the ordeal. Sales in the region that includes China plummeted 7% in July. For a while, you couldn’t order a Big Mac in Beijing.

    Two and a half weeks after the news broke, in early August, I happened to meet employees from OSI who were in Beijing for emergency visits to the company’s plants around the country. One had come from the Chicago-area headquarters; the other worked at a plant in central China.

    I met one as a friend from college, so I won’t use their names. But we talked at length about the crises. Their explanation of what went wrong is the story of a U.S. company that didn’t know what local Chinese managers were doing—and in some cases, couldn’t figure out. Local plant documents and rules weren’t translated from Chinese into English, and even if they had been, OSI’s American managers didn’t often visit.

    OSI is working to fix the problems, but most recently its China business was at a standstill, losing millions of dollars a day in revenue.

    Media reports followed two narratives in the latest China food safety scandal. The first was that McDonald’s, KFC, Starbucks, and the rest of the U.S. restaurants getting supplies from OSI were victims of China’s crackdown on foreign companies—a trend over the past year and a half starting when Starbucks was criticized by Chinese media for the price of its coffee. This was the argument favored by Westerners defending American brands.

    The second, offered mostly by Chinese media, argued that foreign fast food had gotten sloppy in China, and that OSI was guilty of the same food quality and food safety issues plaguing China’s domestic food companies.

    After a night with the two OSI executives, it was clear the Chinese media were right—OSI was sometimes clueless about its operations in China, probably guilty as charged, and pretty open about needing to change.