“The company on one hand was cheating customers by using low quality meat imported from a banned source (India), and on the other was charging high prices, saying that it uses chicken imported from Brazil,” the forum has said in the complaint that it filed at the police and Department of Commerce and Supply Management (DoCSM).[break]
Bimala Khanal, secretary of the forum, said they filed the case because the multinational eatery chain has been found cheating the customers both in terms of quality and pricing. "Its act of importing chicken from a bird flu-prone source is a grave crime,” she stated.
The government has put a ban on poultry imports from India for the past four years, following bird flu outbreak there.
“We have sought action against the company under the ´Social Offence and Punishment Act´ and ´Black Marketeering Act´,” said Khanal.
The complaint under ´Social Offence and Punishment Act´ was filed at the Metropolitan Police Range (MPR), Hanumandhoka, while the complaint under ´Black Marketeering Act´ was filed at the DoCSM.
Following the complaint, police have requested the Ministry of Agricultural Development (MoAD) to immediately make public the report of its probe team.
The ministry had formed a three-member team under its Joint Secretary Uttam Bhattarai on December 17 to investigate how poultry products from a banned source made its way into Nepal. Though the team was asked to submit its report within 5 days, the MoAD has not made the report public yet.
Likewise, police have also written to the Department of Livestock Services (DoLS) to forward it a report that explains why the meat imported by Devyani International Nepal, the franchisee of KFC in Nepal, and Mango Tree International, one of KFC´s poultry suppliers, is not fit for consumption.
KFC´s wrongdoing came to light after poultry entrepreneurs of Dhading on December 16 seized two containers of frozen and ready-to-eat chicken imported from India by Devyani International and Mango Tree International.
As the chicken came from a banned source, officials of DoLS had destroyed the chicken in the presence of local farmers, quarantine officials, police and veterinary experts the same day.
“The destroyed chicken products were rotten and were emitting foul smell. This is a serious issue,” Jyoti Baniya, general secretary of the forum, said.
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