Food brands stretched by India safety record

Moga, India

AT a McDonald's plant outside Mumbai, 200 workers walk through air dryers and disinfectant pools, then get to work making the day's 25,000 patties from chicken painstakingly sourced in a country with one of the world's worst food safety records.

To safeguard its multibillion-dollar brand, McDonald's said, more than 100 checks that it applies across its international operations are then carried out after that.

India's tainted water, patchy cold storage network and a retail sector made up of tiny local grocers present a major risk for international food brands, whose reputation can suffer globally from one local slip.

This can mean educating hundreds of small, often illiterate, farmers - critical in a fragmented farming sector that in some cases still uses "night soil", or human faeces, for composting. "There are thousands of farmers you need to reach out to, each with maybe an acre, two acres of land," said Vikram Ogale, who looks after the supply chain and quality assurance for McDonald's India. "Think of a situation where you ha…