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Imagine finding a whole rat – head, claws, tail and everything cooked in a stuffed crust pizza. After you have already eaten half of it.
It's a bit like what happened to a family in one of China's most popular restaurant chains. A man from Shandong Province said he was halfway to a hot meal with his pregnant wife – a meal in which diners prepared raw meat and vegetables in a bubbling, spicy broth. rodent.
The hot pot chain, Xiabu Xiabu, saw its stock price on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange drop by 12% after a video of the incident became viral, wiping out more than $ 190 million from its Market value. (The shares have since recovered somewhat, but are still down about 8% from levels prior to Ratgate.)
China is no stranger to food security scandals, and this was just the latest horror of stew in the days following the emergence of a Chinese TV channel.
The hot pot variants are popular throughout Asia, from Vietnam to Mongolia and Japan (Xiabu Xiabu comes from the Japanese word for hot pot: shabu shabu). The hot pot market in China sometimes has the stigma of being unclean, mainly because the ingredients used in these meals are often cheap and their flavor and cooking process can affect their quality.
But bubbling group meals, with their assortment of soaking sauces and bright raw fabrics, remain among the most popular dishes in China. Also abroad, the hot pot has a strong moment in trendy food centers, especially in the major cities of the Chinese diaspora, and Chinese channels are hoping to take advantage of this growing popularity to become global brands.
Viral videos of dead rats do not help.
Haidilao, a competing chain that has opened in New York in recent years, is about to launch a $ 1 billion public investment offer in Hong Kong to continue its international expansion, particularly in Britain and the United States. Australia. In a preliminary IPO prospectus, he informed investors of his past food safety incidents and took note of the measures taken in response. (Last year, the channel began broadcasting surveillance videos of piping from its kitchens to television screens installed in customer areas after another viral video showed rats in his kitchen.)
Another international channel, Xiaolongkan, which has offices in Singapore and Australia, was hit this summer by media reports that cooking oil was reused in its restaurants.
After the rat video was broadcast, local authorities in Weifang City closed Xiabu Xiabu Restaurant in Shandong pending the necessary improvements.
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