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Starbucks sues meat vendor over tainted ham

July 16, 2013

Starbucks claims its meat vendor owes it nearly $5 million after the coffee chain had to trash thousands of spoiled ham sandwiches from its shelves on three occasions, according to Seattlepi.com.

Starbucks has filed a lawsuit against Wellshire Farms Inc., which said it had subcontracted the Starbucks' ham order to Hahn Brothers Inc.

After receiving customer complaints in September 2010, Starbucks tested and found harmful bacteria in ham sandwiches, the lawsuit states, and pulled thousands. The coffee chain claims to have lost $4.8 million from the tainted meat.

"Safety is Starbucks number one priority," Zack Hutson of Starbucks Communications, wrote in an email to FastCasual.com. "As such, we take potential quality issues and the protection of our customers and partners (employees) seriously. The reason we initiated this commercial action is to obtain reimbursement for damages resulting from the proactive withdrawal of product that failed to meet our standards. The products were withdrawn out of an abundance of caution in 2010, and we are confident that our customers were not harmed by them."

Read more about food safety.