2 Sisters Food Group has announced it has decided to temporarily suspend operations at its West Bromwich site, following allegations reported by the Guardian and ITV.
Responding to the claims on the Guardian/ITV footage, 2 Sisters Food Group said it has launched its own internal investigation and has also invited Food Standards Agency (FSA) to independently review the company’s standards.
2 Sisters noted in a statement that its internal investigation has shown “some isolated instances of non-compliance with our quality management systems” and added that FSA has been in “daily attendance since the allegations were raised and confirmed that it has not identified any breaches”.
The decision to temporarily suspend operations at the plant in question was made to allow the company “the time to retrain all colleagues including management in all Food safety and Quality management systems”.
The company added: “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.”
The allegations made last week came after an undercover reporter working at the 2 Sisters Food Group site claimed to witness a series of food safety breaches, including workers tampering with slaughter dates to extend the meat’s shelf life, meat of different ages being mixed together, codes on crates of meat being altered and food that had fallen on the floor being picked up and pub back on the production line.
The coverage also included allegations regarding poultry originally produced for Lidl being mixed in with product supposed to be supplied exclusively to Tesco.
In addition, products that had been rejected by supermarkets and sent back to the supplier were also reportedly put back on the production line and sent out again.
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
