Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it removed sesame oil and squid from its shelves after Beijing safety regulators claimed that they found excessive levels of dangerous chemicals in those items.
This is the second time this week that a case has emerged in which Chinese authorities are scrutinizing the safety of Wal-Mart’s merchandise. On Thursday, Wal-Mart said it has removed some frozen pork products from the shelves of one of its stores in China after government inspectors deemed the items were unsafe during an inspection in January.
These fresh accusations come just a little more than a half year after a major pork-labeling scandal hit the retailer’s China operations. In October 2011, government officials in Chongqing alleged the retailer was mislabeling ordinary pork as organic. Wal-Mart’s chief executive officer and senior vice president for human resources resigned in the wake of the scandal.
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A Wal-Mart China spokeswoman said the sesame oil and the fresh squid were immediately removed after the inspection report was issued. She confirmed that the regulator said it found high levels of benzopyrene in the oil and cadmium in the squid. The inspection took place in April, she said.
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“The company has conducted further investigations into this case in which the suppliers’ products were disqualified upon government inspection. The company had collected and checked the supplier’s qualification documents and regulatory documents of items in accordance with relevant state laws and the company’s policies,” the Wal-Mart spokeswoman said.
She went on to state that Wal-Mart has urged the suppliers to strictly abide by relevant state regulations and supply products that meet all national standards.
“We are keeping close communications with local Administrations of Industry and Commerce (AIC) at county level, and will take further actions under the guidance of AIC,” she said.
In the case of the pork earlier in the week, regulators in Dazhou, a city in the southwestern Sichuan Province, found pork ribs in Wal-Mart’s warehouse that were from “diseased pigs,” according to state-run China Daily.
Greg Foran, former senior vice president for Wal-Mart International, recently relocated to China to serve as the retailer’s new president and chief executive officer for the company’s operations on the mainland.
Ben Cavender, a researcher at China Market Research in Shanghai, said that he expects foreign retailers to face increased scrutiny from officials.
“I don’t want to say they [the government] are painting a target on Wal-Mart’s back,” he said. “But they will be looking very closely at foreign retailers to show that they are very serious about this.”
Cavender said the food allegations pose “a very serious image issue” for Wal-Mart.
“It is a problem that can be managed but they have to be aggressive about managing it. I think they are going to have to look at what their brand image needs to be going forward in China or they are going to run into an issue of whether the market begins to grow past them a little bit,” he said.