Photo: CFP

 
The market regulatory department in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, launched an investigation into Walmart Inc's Sam's Club on Friday after a consumer complained that he was sold beef product that had already gone bad.

According to an inspection video released by market regulators in Jinniu District in Chengdu, they had demanded Sam's Club immediately remove related batch of beef products from shelves on January 8, a day after the consumer filed a complaint. The regulator had also carried out a sampling inspection, and results showed that the beef was unqualified and had an unusual darkened color and smell. The faulty batches of products will be recalled, the regulator said on Friday.

The outside layer of the box of the imported beef that the consumer bought from Sam's Club was fine, but the product inside had gone bad and was stinky, according to a video shot by the consumer.

Market regulators sealed up the faulty batch of imported beef subsequently. During the onsite investigation, more issues were found in the store, including inadequate implementation of rules and regulation and overly high temperature in some meat operating rooms. 

The news came a day after the US retail giant was fined 300,000 yuan ($47,218) by Guangdong Administration for Market Regulation (GAMR) for using default five-star ratings for products on the Sam's Club app. GAMR said this constituted false commercial publicity for product evaluation that deceived and misled consumers.

After doing business in China for over 20 years, Sam's Club recently sparked great anger among Chinese netizens after it was exposed to have removed certain products from Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in December. This is happening amid the US launch of vicious attacks toward Xinjiang under a fabricated "forced labor" accusation. Although the business later claimed that "it did not deliberately remove goods sourced from the Xinjiang region," it did not sound convincing to Chinese netizens.

Xu Guixiang, a spokesperson for the Xinjiang regional government, on Thursday issued a stern warning to Sam's Club over its egregious act of removing Xinjiang products from the shelves without a valid reason, reiterating that the so-called forced labor accusation is a complete lie.

Global Times