Recall bites at Cadbury
21 Sep 2006
Cadbury Schweppes will learn in the next few weeks whether or not it will be prosecuted over the outbreak of salmonella contamination at its Marlbrook chocolate products plant. A decision is pending the outcome of investigations by local authorities in Herefordshire and Birmingham, said a Food Standards Agency spokesman.
Product returns following the outbreak caused Cadbury a loss of sales of £5 million and a 1.1% drop in market share, while an interim company estimate put costs relating to the recall at £20 million.
The confectionary maker has already admitted that the contamination was caused by a leaking pipe at the Herefordshire plant. The company first identified the problem in January but did not reveal it publicly until 19 June — after UK health authorities had found a rise in incidence of food poisoning from the rare Salmonella Montevideo strain, which Cadbury had identified in its products.
Cadbury's methodology for assessing the risk of salmonella in its chocolate was subsequently criticised by the FSA's Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF). It said the company's testing was unreliable and had underestimated the level and likelihood of salmonella contamination.
EC regulation 178/2002 requires that food can only be placed on the market if it is fit for human consumption. According to the FSA spokesman, while a very low level of salmonella might be acceptable in foods such as eggs and meat, this is not true for ready-to-eat foods such as chocolate bars.
"The presence of salmonella in a ready-to-eat product such as a chocolate bar is unacceptable at any level," the FSA spokesman emphasised, adding that the contents that go into chocolate manufacture make it a very good conduit for salmonella.
The ACMSF also called for a robust HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) system to be introduced at Cadbury, though a company spokesman told PE that it did have such systems in operation at all its factories.
Cadbury relied on end-product testing that, the ACMSF found, was not suitable for guaranteeing the safety of the food. It added that the company wrongly drew parallels between the threshold for salmonella infection and the threshold for infection by other micro-organisms found in chocolate.
Cadbury assumed that there was a safe level of salmonella in a product like chocolate, said ACMSF, pointing out that there is no minimum infection dose for salmonella.
According to a Cadbury spokesman, the company has now introduced a system of positive release for all the ingredients that go into its chocolate products. All constituents are tested individually to ensure they are safe for human consumption before use. This higher level of testing has meant changes to process operations, but the spokesman said it now had "a robust operation and is confident that all its chocolate products from its four UK plants are 100% safe."
