McDonald's Food Quality and Safety: An Action Plan Report

This report analyzes McDonald's food quality and safety issues, focusing on key events, scandals, and ethical concerns. It explores incidents such as undercooked burgers, misinterpretation of ingredients, and obesity lawsuits, examining their impact on the company's image and stakeholders. The report applies decision-making, CSR, and business ethics theories to understand the implications of these issues. It also evaluates the application of risk management and stakeholder theory in addressing these challenges. The report includes a summary of the task, key literature reviews, and concludes with the need for McDonald's to develop an action plan to improve food quality and maintain consumer satisfaction. The report also emphasizes the importance of providing healthy and nutritious food and maintaining a positive brand image.

ACTION PLAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Key events...................................................................................................................................1
Key literature to case...................................................................................................................3
Summary of task.........................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
McDonald's is an American fast food retain company that deals in products especially
burgers. It was founded in 1940. It is a public company that is spread over 36000 locations all
over the world. McDonald's provides a variety of products to customers. It also operates in many
countries. So it is important for McDonald's to maintain food safety and quality. Also,
McDonald's is highly involved in many cases related to quality of food. Due to this McDonald's
has to develop several policies and make some changes in their process. Besides this,
McDonald's operates at very large level, so it has to follow different rules of countries.
Moreover, McDonald's has been able to create a positive impact on minds of people. This is done
by providing high quality food. That is why McDonald's is taken for this present report.
 McDonald's is a multi national company that provides a variety of products and services
to people. It produces burgers and other food products.
Key events
Food industry must maintain effective hygiene so that high quality food can be provided
to people. For this companies have to check the quality of raw materials that are being used. It is
important that standards must be set to measure food quality (Myers and Wiel, 2014). It will
help in identifying the contaminated food and removing it. Also, it is necessary that a proper
cooking environment is maintained. It is the responsibility of companies to provide healthy and
nutritious food to people. So it will help in maintaining brand image.
Health and safety risk
This case describes the incident that occurred in South Korea where an undercooked
burger meat was served and number of people was suffering from health problems. But in child
was suffered heavily due to this. A mother complained that her daughter suffered permanent
kidney failure due to this. McDonald's has been involved many incidents related to poor food
quality. This has impacted their image to a great extent.
Decision making theory – For this case decision making theory can be applied. It states that by
taking proper decisions the risk can be minimised. This theory is applicable in all areas of
management.

CSR
Another case occurred in 1990 that was related to French fires. McDonald's said that they
use vegetable oil for cooking French fires, but later in 1993 a customer claimed that company
uses beef oil for cooking food items (Chandel and Ramasamy, 2016). It was against the beliefs
and values of many religious groups. The court took legal action against the company. The
lawsuit ended in 2002 resulting McDonald's to pay $10 million dollars. This case was related to
misinterpretation. Due to this McDonald's suffered a huge loss in their profits. Also, there was a
negative impact on its brand image.
Business ethics theory – this theory based on social obligation and moral duty that business has
towards society. Basically, theory is based on three elements that are as follows :-
 Changing and emerging social responsibility to various social problems
 Eternal and intrinsic ethical values stated by Kantian principles such as human rights,
social justice, etc.
 Corporate citizenship
Obesity
This is a case in which two teenagers are suing McDonald's and two Bronx franchise that
they have damaged their obesity. It is because McDonald's didn't provide sufficient information
about health risks associated with their meals, so this lead to health problems and issues after
eating from McDonald's. The lawyers of McDonald's said that person must know about what
ingredients in products such as Hamburgers and fries have.
Pica Theory – It states that a person get fat because they are having inappropriate mixture of
nutrients in their body. A person will not get fat by eating too much. This theory can be applied
in this case.
Theories applicable to McDonald's

It is very important that risk management should be followed and implemented. It is
because it will help in taking proper and corrective actions. Also, with this McDonald's will be
able to implement risk management effectively.
Stakeholder theory - for this present case stakeholder theory can be applied. It states
relationship between organisation and external and internal environment. It also shows that how
they are interrelated to each other and what influence it can have on business activities. Due to
these scandals, McDonald's stakeholder was highly affected. In this stakeholder includes the
customers, suppliers and government was highly affected. Due to scandals McDonald's
customers was highly affected in various countries. A negative image was created in their minds
due to poor quality.
By using this company will be able to grow. It will also result in reduction in scandals.
By enhancing quality of food McDonald's can maintain its brand image. Furthermore, it will help
in providing healthy and nutritious food. With this McDonald's can gain trust and confidence of
customers. Management can set standards through which quality of food as well as raw materials
can be measured (Sjöström, Berg and Waern, 2018). It will help in identifying mistakes in this
and correcting them. Along with this, certain measures can be taken to improve the process and
methods of cooking food.
Key literature to case
 Reports of several scandals related to food industry (10 outrageous McDonald's scandals
2017)
 Importance of providing healthy food to people.
 Culture of Japan and needs of people.
 McDonald's corporate governance (2015 )
Summary of task
The task completed in this are as follows :-
 Reading of scandals related to food quality in McDonald's
 Secondary research conducted in McDonald's to identify its internal environment.

 Reading the media reports related to other companies
Issues that are discovered include
 Lack of literature review related to McDonald's scandals, so a deep understanding of why
scandals occurred is required.
 More cases and evidence are required to support the scandal.
CONCLUSION
This report concludes that McDonald's must develop an action plan to improve the
quality of food. This will help in providing healthy and nutritious food to people and increasing
their satisfaction. With this they will be able to retain them as well.

REFERENCES
Books and journals :
Chandel, S.S. and Ramasamy, P., 2016. Overview of the initiatives in renewable energy sector
under the national action plan on climate change in India. Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Reviews, 54, pp.866-873.
Lindsay, P. and Norrving, B., 2014. World Stroke Organization global stroke services
guidelines and action plan. International Journal of Stroke, 9, pp.4-13.
Myers, K. and Wiel, S.V., 2014. Discussion of ‘data science: An action plan for expanding the
technical areas of the field of statistics’. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining: The ASA
Data Science Journal, 7(6), pp.420-422.
Sjöström, N., Berg, D. and Waern, M., 2018. F215. Early Signs Action Plan: Experiences Of
Relatives. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 44(Suppl 1), p.S305.
Online
McDonald's food safety scandal, 2015. [Online] Available through :
<https://seekingalpha.com/article/2805175-mcdonalds-yet-another-major-food-safety-
scandal>
McDonald's burger scandal, 2017. [Online] Available through :
<https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/mcdonalds-burger-scandal-undercooked-meat-
11129494>