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The
verdict marks the end of a long-running probe into OSI after a
safety scandal in 2014 dragged in fast-food giants McDonald's
Corp and Yum Brands Inc.
The Shanghai Jiading People's Court said in a statement on its
Weibo microblog on Monday that Yang Liqun, a general manager at
OSI China, would be sentenced to three years in prison and
deported. It wasn't clear whether Yang, who the court said was
an Australian citizen, would serve jail time in China.
OSI said it did not have an immediate comment on the verdict,
which follows a trial held at the end of December. Lawyers for
the company did not immediately respond to phoned and emailed
requests for comment.
The Australian embassy in China did not have an immediate
comment on the case.
The Jiading court statement said Yang and other workers at OSI's
China units had reused products from returned or canceled orders
in order to avoid financial losses, meaning that some unapproved
products had entered the market.
It added nine other people in the case would be given shorter
jail terms and would have to pay fines. Four of the nine would
have their jail sentences suspended, it said.
The court added the punishments were relatively lenient because
the defendants had been cooperative in the investigation. People
with direct knowledge of the case had feared the fine could be
much larger.
China is trying to clean up its reputation for food safety
scandals, which range from recycled "gutter oil" and "zombie
meat" to crops tainted with heavy metals. Senior Chinese leaders
recently said food safety in the country remained "grim".
The OSI case broke in July, 2014, when a Chinese TV report
alleged to show workers at a Shanghai unit of OSI using
out-of-date meat and doctoring production dates, a scandal which
rippled as far afield as Japan and prompted apologies from OSI
clients McDonald's and Yum.
A senior executive for OSI in China told the official Xinhua
news agency last July the scandal had cost the firm close to a
billion dollars in lost revenue.
(Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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