It has been mighty hot outside lately, hasn't it?

Seems everywhere you look in Shenzhen or Shanghai or Beijing men have the legs of their trousers rolled up and women are strutting along under umbrellas to pamper their skin.

Oh, the joys of summer, when a nice bowl of delicious ice cream sure does taste sweet.

And when my mouth waters as I ponder the delights of vanilla, chocolate, or my personal favourite - strawberry - I'm drawn to the taste of home. But I don't just want any old ice cream, I want the creme de le creme of ice creme, and that's always meant splurging on a pint of Haagen-Dazs.

But even as we're on the verge of celebrating that biggest of US festivals, the Fourth of July, a purveyor in China of that most wonderful of commodities, has been caught up to no good. Recently Guangdong provincial quality assurance authorities received a tip that Haagen-Dazs ice cream cakes were being processed in a small apartment in Zhenhua Mansion in the Luohu District of Shenzhen.

According to the Shenzhen Evening News, inspectors who raided the house first suspected it was a fly-by-night underground factory at work producing counterfeit Haagen-Dazs ice cream cakes. Much to their surprise, Haagen-Dazs officials soon confirmed it was indeed their kitchen.

The problem: The outlet didn't even have a food processor's licence. Yet it was supplying all five Haagen-Dazs outlets in the city, though it did not have the necessary hygiene and quality control approvals. Haagen-Dazs noted that the site previously had served as one of its ice cream outlets that was located on the first floor of the building. The store had closed down several months before.

Wisely, the Shenzhen government moved in and confiscated 75 kilograms of the ice cream there. It must have been painful to watch, but officers destroyed the stuff. Haagen-Dazs eateries throughout the city were ordered to stop selling the unapproved cakes, according to company officials and inspectors.

While no fines or other punishments have yet been mandated, the authorities should respond stringently. General Mills China, Haagen-Dazs's corporate owner, is a major enterprise doing business in a country where it should be held accountable to that nation's food quality standards, rules and regulations.

I ask you: What if the kitchen had an employee who suffers from tuberculosis who coughed his way through each batch of ice cream he mixed? What if the raw materials were substandard? What if the place was filthy? Nobody really knows because the site had not received proper inspections and approvals from inspectors.

Shenzhen newspapers have chronicled how local customers' angry reactions to this news and accused the firm of simply not caring about consumer health. Business traffic, they have reported, is in the doldrums, and the company has issued a statement to apologize and promised to correct the problems. That's standard PR advice. Get out there quickly and apologize sincerely.

Yet where was common sense beforehand? Why do we always see "good corporate citizens" not acting properly and then apologizing afterward?

No, this is not on a par with the milk powder scandals that China has experienced in recent months. It's not farmer's poisoning us tea drinkers with green dye, or fast food outlets dumping red Sudan 1 carcinogens in their ketchup to pollute our hamburgers and fries. It appears to be just another example of a corporation not really caring about the rules and cutting corners for the sake of making profits.

A firm like General Mills China ought to know better and have safeguards in place at its kitchens. After all, it has 48 outlets on the Chinese mainland and manufactures ice cream for the supermarkets across the nation.

On this Fourth of July, you can bet that one American expat in China with a sweet tooth is going to be enjoying ice cream.

But it won't be Haagen-Dazs.