Rotten meat scandal: company boss Sheldon Lavin battles to turn things round

In the early 1980s, Sheldon Lavin, a banker-turned-burger tycoon, returned from a trip to China with big plans for his food-processing company OSI Group.

"I don't care if we sell the erasers off pencils, we are going to China," he told his staff, according to a 2012 story in National Provisioner, an industry publication.

Now, the 82-year-old Lavin is discovering just how difficult operating in China can be.

On July 20, a Chinese television station showed plant workers at an OSI subsidiary in Shanghai repackaging and selling chicken and beef past their sell-by dates.

Within days, Starbucks and Yum Brands had cut ties with OSI. McDonald's, a longtime OSI partner, pulled beef, pork and chicken items from its Chinese restaurants, though it stuck with OSI.

Over the past 30 years, Lavin parlayed OSI into a global food-processing giant that makes everything from Big Mac patties to the pork used in KFC's breakfast burgers. OSI won a reputation for quality and safety in an industry that has attracted plenty of unsavoury headlines over the years.