The beef was purchased at Costco Yangpyeong, the retailer’s first location in Asia.
On July 19, 2024, a Korean man in his 50s, identified by the pseudonym The Return of Kim Seung Chan in an exclusive relationship from Hankyorehfound a hard foreign object in the Bulgogi he cooked with the beef he bought at the Costco Yangpyeong, the first Costco store in Asia.
According to Kim, the object consisted of two pieces of metal about the size of a grain of rice.
After an investigation, it was determined that the metal fragments were pieces of shotgun pellets, commonly used to scare birds on U.S. farms. The pellets had somehow gotten embedded in the meat and were distributed as far away as Costco in Korea.
Hankyoreh said the meat in question was imported from a farm in Kansas by “Company A,” a mid-sized food importer specializing in meat. While this company has an inspection process (including metal testing) when it packages imported meat into smaller packages, the same process does not apply when the imported meat is simply distributed in bulk to retailers like Costco.
Kim said Costco Yangpyeong wasn’t too keen on fixing the problem. They took the metal pieces back from Kim but didn’t provide any explanation for over a week. Only after Kim did a follow-up was he able to find out that they were pellets, likely from a shotgun. According to Kim, Costco tried avoiding its responsibilities by directing him to contact the importer, and when he raised concerns that the same meat might be sold to other customers, Costco fired him.
Similarly, Costco also refused to respond to Hankyoreh. On the other hand, when contacted, the official of the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety stated: “We have sent an official investigation to the U.S. Embassy to determine the cause of the presence of shotgun pellets in the beef and will strengthen import inspections in the future.”
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