HAAGEN-DAZS, a major ice cream brand of General Mills, has apologized to consumers for processing ice cream cakes in a workshop without a sanitation permit, the Beijing News reported on June 19.

The State General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine on its website announced the investigation into the ¡°black kitchen¡± on June 22.

On June 16, a citizen reported to the Shenzhen quality agency that a small workshop was making fake Haagen-Dazs ice cream. But officials found the kitchen was an authentic supplier for the US company¡¯s Shenzhen branch.

In the three-room general apartment, the toilet was just next door to a food processing room and a trash can was placed beside the oven. Officials also discovered that the sanitation permit provided by a Haagen-Dazs employee was not for the workshop, but for somewhere else.

The workshop was shut down, and all Haagen-Dazs ice-cream cakes supplied by the workshop for five chain stores were then disposed of.

In Shanghai, food authorities checked the Haagen-Dazs workshop located in Minghang and found the workshop to be OK. The test results for ice cream cakes will come out later this week.

¡°We¡¯d like to apologize to consumers for what happened in our Shenzhen company. We¡¯ll improve management and go on offering consumers fine-quality products and services,¡± Zhu Xi, general manager of Haagen-Dazs China, was quoted as saying.

Haagen-Dazs has 48 branches in mainland China. (Star News)