KFC owner apologizes over scandal of 'instant chicken'

Fast food giant Yum Brands Inc, owner of KFC and Pizza Hut, Thursday apologized for a recent "instant chicken" scandal and conceded it hadn't reported excessive antibiotics detected in chicken samples.

The company published an open letter to customers on KFC's official website to apologize for not reporting the test results and for not quickly changing suppliers.

The company said it had found faults in food testing procedures, and a lack of communication inside the company and with the public.

It promised to improve testing procedures and require suppliers to complete testing before delivering food to prevent problem products reaching the company.

It also promised to strengthen communication with local government and report problems to supervisors in time.

The letter was published about three weeks after the company was found to be using "instant chicken" from birds fed chemicals laced with illegal medicine and 18 kinds of antibiotics to keep them alive and speed up their growth.

According to a China Central Television news program on December 18, several poultry suppliers in Shandong Province were found to be accelerating the growth of chickens by using harmful chemicals in their feed. One, the Liuhe Group, was supplying chicken to Yum Brands.

Batches of the "instant chicken" were transported from a slaughterhouse to the Shanghai logistics center of Yum Brands, according to the program.

Yum Brands was later found by Shanghai food safety officials to have known about excessive antibiotics in the chicken from Liuhe but didn't report it and continued to buy the tainted chicken.

Yum signed a contract with a government institute, the Shanghai Institute for Food and Drug Control, in August 2005 to serve as a third-party inspection body to test the quality of raw produce from suppliers.

A Shanghai food safety office report said that from 2010 to 2011, eight out of 19 batches of chicken the company purchased from Liuhe had excessive levels of antibiotics.

Reports were sent to the company by the institute, but neither the company nor the institute informed the city government, food safety officials said.

On December 21, the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration said a sample of Yum Brands' raw chicken was suspected of contamination with an antiviral medicine. Samples are still being tested.