9 Fast Food Recalls That Will Always Haunt McDonald's

Despite being a global fast food chain with some 41,800 restaurants around the world, McDonald's issues surprisingly few recalls. This is largely thanks to the excellent relationships the chain maintains with its suppliers. The majority of these suppliers have been working with McDonald's for years and have gained the chain's trust due to the rarity with which they make mistakes and their ability to iron out errors. What's more, McDonald's boasts vertical integration in its supply chain, meaning the fast food brand is involved in every step of the production process. This allows McDonald's to address potential issues before they reach the public.

As a company that sells vast amounts of fast food — including approximately 6 million hamburgers per day in the United States alone — McDonald's cannot completely avoid food recalls. While the chain does its best to deal with these issues swiftly and quietly, some recalls quickly become media stories, either due to their scope or the risks they pose. What follows are nine of the McDonald's most infamous recalls that have dogged the chain in countries around the world.

A scandal rocked several of China's fast food chains in 2014 when it was discovered that they were being supplied with tainted, unsanitary meat from a processing plant owned by Shanghai Husi Food. Not only was there video proof of meat dropped on the dirty floor and then packaged for sale, but meat that had gone off was also repackaged with a new expiration date. As a result of the breaking news story, McDonald's locations in both Beijing and Shanghai recalled all of their beef and chicken products, leaving numerous McDonald's restaurants with little else to serve but drinks and french fries.

The public's reaction to this recall was especially strong because video evidence was captured by broadcasters for "Dragon TV," a provincial satellite TV station. With the evidence widely disseminated and plain to see, many fast food chains dropped Shanghai Husi Food, and its parent company OSI Group LLC., as suppliers. McDonald's did not despite the recall being so large as to affect restaurants in both Hong Kong and Japan.

Thanks to McDonald's and other companies' recalls, no one fell ill as a result of eating the bad meat. However, OSI Group LLC. was heavily fined and blacklisted, and ten of its employees were also fined. Many of these individuals were even given prison sentences.

Less than a year after China's meat scandal, which also had a large impact on Japanese customers, McDonald's Japan suffered another blow in 2015 after a customer found a piece of plastic in one of their chicken nuggets. The nugget was traced to a manufacturing plant in Thailand and McDonald's subsequently recalled all other chicken nuggets that had been made in that factory on the same day. This amounted to 956,925 chicken nuggets in total.

To make matters even worse, just days after the recall was issued another customer found a 1.5 inch piece of vinyl plastic in a chicken nugget bought from a McDonald's in Misawa, a city located in the north of Aomori Prefecture. While no further reports of plastic contamination were recorded, nor any injuries, the damage had been done. This one-two punch spelled disaster for McDonald's Japan and the company saw sales drop dramatically across the country.

One of the biggest foodborne illness outbreaks to rock McDonald's locations in the United States came in 2018 when over 500 people fell ill after eating salad at the fast food chain's outlets located in multiple states. Salads manufactured at a facility owned by Fresh Express Inc. in Streamwood, Illinois were to blame. At some point in the supply chain, this salad was contaminated with cyclospora, a parasite that causes gastro-intestinal illnesses in those who consume it. Once notified of the outbreak, McDonald's pulled the salad from all of its affected restaurants, around 3,000 across 13 states, and swiftly changed suppliers.

Although it's impossible to know exactly when and how this produce became contaminated, many experts believe it occurred sometime while the leafy greens were growing. In an interview with CNBC, food safety expert Martin Bucknavage said, "Some water had to become contaminated and then used to irrigate the crops that become salad. These spores get into the water and survive for long periods of time. It could [be from] some from someplace upstream."

McDonald's Ireland was forced to issue a recall for its sweet and sour sauce during November 2021 when it discovered mustard was not listed on the item's ingredient list despite being included in the sauce. As an allergen that can cause serious symptoms in those vulnerable to it, including anaphylaxis, the consumption of this mislabelled food had the potential to cause fatal consequences. Fortunately for all parties involved, there were no reports of illnesses, injuries, or allergic reactions occurring as a result of the erroneously labeled product.

The sauce was packaged in small, 25 milliliter containers that were freely available to customers in-store. Physical notices announcing the recalls were put up in all affected McDonald's restaurants. Notices were also issued online by organizations such as the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. In these notices, customers were made aware of the faulty product and instructed on to how to identify it. This was done by referring to the product's best before date which, for the faulty product, was the 23rd of February 2022.

In 2012, Missa Bay LLC. recalled 293,488 cases worth of food products over concerns that they contained pieces of apple that had been contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a bacteria that can cause an illness known as listeriosis. This illness causes a variety of unpleasant symptoms including nausea, vomiting, and fever. In some circumstances, particularly when patients are young or immunocompromised, listeriosis can even result in death.

McDonald's was one of Missa Bay LLC.'s clients and, as a result, the fast food chain was forced to recall its popular apple slices from restaurants across multiple states: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Other McDonald's products that contained apples were also included in the recall, specifically oatmeal and the chain's fruit and walnut snacks. 

Despite Missa Food LLC.'s recall affecting a variety of companies, including Burger King and Wegmans, across 36 states, there were no illnesses associated with the product. This is something all companies will have been immensely grateful for.

McDonald's customers in Timaru, a city on the south island of New Zealand, got a nasty surprise when they purchased the chain's chicken McBites during the summer of 2020. Instead of being perfectly cooked and warm through, customers in the area received chicken that was still raw in the middle. Consuming raw chicken poses a significant health risk as the flesh can be host to various harmful bacteria including Salmonella and Clostridium perfringens.

After receiving customer complaints, McDonald's pulled the product from shelves and conducted an internal investigation. In a statement to The Timaru Herald and recorded by Stuff, a spokesperson for McDonald's said, "McDonald's worked with the supplier to confirm that the cause of the issue was an incorrect product size specification in production, rather than human error in the restaurant."

It was later revealed that, at the production facility, pieces of chicken had stuck together before being breaded. The resulting pieces were far larger than usual. As McDonald's employees are trained to cook products for a specific amount of time, the overlarge bites were undercooked when removed from the fryer and served.

Marketing teams are known to use every trick in the book when describing a product. However, McDonald Brazil went too far in 2022 when it decided to launch a new sandwich called the McPicanha in restaurants across the country.

Picanha is a piece of beef that comes from the rump and is known to be one of the best steaks to order from a restaurant. Thanks to a large amount of fat, the cut is known for being both tender and incredibly flavorful, hence why it is one of the most popular cuts of beef in Brazil. Unfortunately, McDonald's McPicanha contained no picanha at all. Instead, it contained regular beef topped with a "picanha-flavored" sauce.

Both customers and a consumer protection agency called Procon thought the name of McDonald's new burger was deliberately misleading. As a result, McDonald's was ordered to pull the new item from the menu which the chain did, recalling all McPicanhas from circulation.

McDonald's in the United Kingdom issued a recall in conjunction with Britvic PLC for Robinsons fruit shoot apple and blackcurrant in 2019. Britvic, a packaging company, issued this recall because the 200 milliliter bottles had a spout that could accidentally become detached, posing a choking hazard to children. The product was also distributed to Tesco and Costco stores.

In a statement reported by The Sun, a senior member of Britvic's executive team Paul Graham said, "We always put the health and safety of consumers first. Accordingly, as soon as we were made aware of a packaging issue, we took steps immediately to minimize any potential risk to consumers."

Graham was true to his word. Notices were placed in locations that had sold the fruit shoots and the recall was performed successfully. There were no reports of any injuries related to the fruit beverage's faulty packaging.

It's not always faulty or contaminated products that require a recall, but those that are severely understocked too. This was the case in Melbourne, Australia when McDonald's popular hash browns were recalled due to national distribution issues in March 2018. Due to not having enough products in stock, McDonald's was unable to keep up with demand and made the difficult decision to pull the popular menu option from some of its stores.

Thankfully, this issue was short lived, as a spokesperson for McDonald's highlighted in an interview with Triple M, saying, "A small number of our restaurants ran low on hash browns this morning due to a temporary distribution issue with one of our suppliers — this primarily impacted restaurants in Victoria. All effected restaurants will be re-stocked today." The fast food chain offered french fries as an alternative to the recalled hash browns.