H?agen-Dazs, the leading ice cream brand, apologized for a workshop in Shenzhen City that did not have a valid sanitation permit after the operation was judged unsanitary last week, according to Beijing News on Sunday.

"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 H?agen-Dazs China, was quoted as saying.

The US company's branch in Shenzhen, in the southern province of Guangdong, was found last Thursday to use a workshop in a residential apartment to make products that were sold in all five franchised stores in the city.

Today’s China Daily reported that a private citizen had originally reported the operation to the local quality supervision bureau believing that it was violating the US food giant’s brand name.

On inspection, it was discovered that the workshop was an official H?agen-Dazs operation, but that sanitary conditions were substandard and a permit held by staff was for a different location.

Local industrial and commercial administration officials said it was hard to guarantee the quality of food from the three-room workshop, where a toilet was adjacent to a food processing area and a trash can beside cooking facilities.

"We would not issue a permit under such production conditions," said an official named Yu from the sanitation supervision bureau of Luohu District, where the operation was located.

All food produced in the workshop was disposed of and the place sealed up by the bureau, and the company said customers who had bought the affected products could get a refund.

Zhu blamed the incident on the "negligence of management" as they thought that their sanitation permit could be used at the workshop.

H?agen-Dazs was established in the US in the early 1920s and entered the Chinese mainland market in 1996, where it now has 48 branches.

(Xinhua News Agency June 20, 2005)