The expiration date of a product is the one that is originally marked on its packaging by the person who makes it and that, under no circumstances, can be modified. All the parties involved in this case agree on this: the Burger King franchise, the Tres Arroyos poultry company, and the Montevideo City Hall. Therefore, extending an expiration date already marked is somewhat irregular. They all agree on that too.
But the facts are different. The Argentine poultry company Tres Arroyos – which supplies Burger King with three chicken products approved by the Montevideo City Hall – sent a document by letterhead in which it “extended” the useful life of three batches of merchandise that were about to expire , as the original boxes showed, was able to verify The Observer.
The document reached Burger King – in Uruguay, the franchise is Adiser SA – and the workers received the message that the merchandise could be sold because it “had an extension” of the supplier’s expiration date.
The letter, held by The Observer, has the letterhead of Tres Arroyos and is signed by the agronomist, Juan Ignacio Grasso, who is the head of Quality of the company. It is dated October 14, 2022.
Says the following:
We hereby record the extension of the useful life of the following batches of the Burger King brand “Chicken Patties Breader” product, produced by Avícola Capitán Sarmiento, in nine months.
Said extension does not compromise the physical-chemical, microbiological or sensory quality of these batches, as long as the product has been preserved and maintained within the recommended conditions.
And it refers to three batches of the “Chicken Patties Breader” product. On 04-22, 04-29 and 05-20. The manufacturing dates of these products were April 22, April 29 and May 20. The new expiration date is nine months from when they were made: January 22, January 29 and February 20, 2023.
The point is that chicken Patty hamburgers – as they are called in Argentina and with the fancy name with which the product was registered in the Montevideo City Hall – have a useful life of six months.
Silvana González, Director of Audits and Control of Food Enterprises -and who these days was substituting in the direction of the Food Regulation service of the Municipality of Montevideo-, explained to The Observer that with regard to imported food, once it is in the country, the expiration date is “unchangeable.” That is, what they take for valid is the expiration date that was put by the manufacturer on the product.
The Municipality’s Food Regulation register, which can be accessed by any user from the official website, shows this.
Burger King has registered and approved three imported products from the company Tres Arroyos: those formed from frozen pre-fried battered chicken breast and skin -the Patties-, which have a qualified shelf life of six months and are presented in bags of between 10 and 20 kilos; frozen cooked battered chicken forms, which have a shelf life of nine months; and junior chickens, which also have a useful life of six months.
The authorizations granted by the Municipality of Montevideo are for registered products and said authorization lasts five years, which implies that the company can import and market that product during the permitted period.
What arrived at the Burger King premises, however, were the boxes with their original expiration date – the only valid one. The Observer verified that last Thursday lots of the merchandise referred to in the “extension” arrived at several franchise restaurants. The expiration dates on the boxes said October 29 and November 20, 2022.
These boxes were approved by merchandise receivers and entered several stores despite being expired for two and three months.
consulted by The Observer, the general manager of Burger King in Uruguay, Mario Giménez, said that he was not aware that this had happened and that by procedure restaurants are prohibited from entering expired merchandise. That they can even reject the boxes to the distributor if the products have less than 70% of their validity. That is to say: if it expires ten days after processing, it should arrive at the premises when more than three have run.
“We didn’t let her in. The merchandise expires at the store, because the store ordered it and did not consume it, if the person placing the orders made a mistake, ordered 10 and ended up selling five… We give them tools and training so that this does not happen, but when It happens that we have a whole plan on how to get rid of that merchandise without it reaching the hands of consumers. And obviously it is totally prohibited for any store manager or store manager to sell out-of-life products”, stressed Giménez.
However, several witnesses consulted by The Observer –and who prefer to remain anonymous so as not to see their source of employment affected– emphasize that irregular “extensions” are something common with which they are used to dealing.
In fact, the sources explained that the same thing happens with the Stacker sauce and with the vanilla, coming from Brazil, as well as with the vegetarian burgers. The problem arises with imported products and the overstock that Burger King makes with the batches it makes from abroad.
Beef, however, is produced in Uruguay and they are not aware that “extensions” have ever been given, they reported.
On this point, the dialogue of The Observer with the general manager of Burger King, Giménez, was the following:
—How do the extensions to the expiration dates that you request from certain providers work?
—We today have the useful life, which is what the corporation approves of us. Each supplier that we have has an authorization process that is authorized by the corporation. We are tied to it. We have constant corporate monitoring.
—So you don’t use extensions…?
—No, because you would have to have authorization from the Municipality of Montevideo. We do not use that medium.
—But there are extensions granted by the company Tres Arroyos, of a product that originally lasts six months, and gives an extension to nine, of batches that were withdrawn this Monday. The company made that extension. I know, and that is why it was received at the premises, in fact.
—I’m not clear about that, do you have something you can show me?
I have it, I can’t show you. I know.
—If it’s something that you can show me and that I can review and that I can talk to the people of Tres Arroyos, pass it on to me and I’ll review it with them. We do not work with that type of format. I don’t understand what you’re telling me.
The National Bromatological Regulation – Decree 315/994 of 1994 – refers in its section 13.6.10 to the approved general authorized useful life for non-refrigerated and frozen birds.
The recently slaughtered, if they are not frozen, expire after six days. Frozen products, and kept at -18ºC, can be stored for up to 10 months. Once they are thawed, they should be consumed immediately.
That is to say: the decree, at a general level, enables frozen chicken for up to 10 months. However, in particular, each registered product has a useful life enabled by the mayor based on technical analysis. If the Municipality of Montevideo enabled that the useful life is six months, that is what the product must comply with, and that is what the expiration date must show in each merchandise.
The Observer consulted the head of Quality of Tres Arroyos, Juan Ignacio Grasso, about why he had signed an extension of expiration dates for Chicken Patty Breader products, but the agronomist excused himself from answering because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
The general manager of Tres Arroyos, Federico Olariaga, explained to The Observer that the poultry farm “does not give expiration date extensions” and stressed that, once the expiration date is stated on the product box, they cannot give extensions. When asked about the extension signed by Grasso, he replied that he had to see it to understand what it was about.
Anonymous complaint and withdrawal of boxes
The Municipality of Montevideo received an anonymous complaint about this situation, and for this reason it sent inspectors to several locations on Monday. The company was aware of this complaint when The Observer He consulted his general manager. That day, Burger King asked its logistics company to remove the boxes of out-of-date merchandise.
“Not much happened. We, the expired merchandise, which sometimes happens, have it separated. This Monday we had visits from the mayor in some places, because we understand that there is some kind of anonymous complaint, there was something like that, that we are not very clear about, and they did not find anything expired in use, ”he said.
His version was that the products expire inside the premises – never before entering – because the managers over-calculate what they think they are going to sell, but that they have a specific place for expired merchandise, separate from the one that is cooked and stored. sells. Since they cannot dispose of it as residential waste, they wait for the days when the trucks arrive to take it to a specific place, which in their case is the Parque Tecnológico del Cerro.
“In use, expired products – the mayor’s office – did not find anything, luckily,” said Giménez.
Burger King Cannelloni did not have the same luck. as he learned The Observerofficials from the mayor’s office seized five boxes of chicken medallions from the Las Piedras mall on Tuesday because they had expired since December, which will imply fines yet to be defined, sources consulted in this regard said.
