Following the revelations, the 2 Sisters food group, which provides a third of all poultry products in the UK, has now said that it will retrain staff, including its management, in every aspect of food safety and quality management systems. It also said it would only begin to resupply meat once all staff had been appropriately re-trained.
The news stories on the Guardian and broadcast by ITV claimed the firm had repackaged old meat with new meat and re-sent it to supermarkets.
The investigation also claimed that quality assurance managers were ‘bullied’ and unable to instill basic food hygiene standards.
But the Food Standards Agency claimed it had found no evidence of food hygiene issues following the allegations being published last Thursday.
Aldi, Lidl, Tesco and Marks and Spencer have all said they will suspend purchasing from the firm as a result of the revelations.
The statement from 2 Sisters, which was published on Sunday (October 1), said:
“We are shocked and distressed by the allegations and the footage which we saw for the first time on Thursday September 28th.
Since the allegations were put to us by the Guardian/ITV, we have been working around the clock to get to the truth of the matter.
We responded immediately by launching our own internal investigation at our West Bromwich plant and invited the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to independently review our standards.
The FSA has been in daily attendance since the allegations were raised and confirmed that it has not identified any breaches.
However, our internal investigation has shown some isolated instances of non-compliance with our own Quality management systems.
We have therefore decided to temporarily suspend operations at the site to allow us the time to retrain all colleagues including management in all Food safety and Quality management systems.
All colleagues will remain on full pay and will attend site whilst training is undertaken.
We will only recommence supply once we are satisfied that our colleagues have been appropriately retrained.
We continue to work closely with the FSA and our customers throughout this period.
We remain committed to ensuring that we operate to the highest standards of hygiene and food safety, and we act with honesty and integrity at all times.”
Am I mistaken or should the headline read “Chicken Supplier Breaches Food Hygiene Requirements” ? One does not need to look too far to understand why health and safety gets tarnished. Perhaps James you could say why this is health and safety and not Food Hygiene