Tesco fined £7.56 Million but the FSA keep quiet!
Why is it that the Food Standard Agency (FSA) appear to be keeping quiet on the public front, when supermarkets either breach the law or fail to meet targets they have set for them to ensure food safety?
On Monday last week 19th April 2021 Tesco was fined £7.56 Million for selling a variety of food past its “use by” date in three stores in Birmingham between 2015-2017.
Link to this new story below from the BBC.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-56818519
In the Judgement against Tesco Stores Ltd from this case (Link below where this document can then be downloaded) it states in the sentencing outline under background, in point 1 “In brief, this prosecution alleges that Tesco played ‘Russian Roulette’ with customer’s safety”. (The prosecution being Birmingham City Council).
https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/file/19238/birmingham_city_council_judgement_against_tesco_stores_ltd_190421
On the 22/01/2019 a judge has ruled that Tesco’s defence experts’ evidence was inadmissible. However, Tesco decided to appeal to the High Court.
Tesco’s High Court appeal was initially refused permission but they continued with their argument. Then on 06/04/2020 the High Court ruled the legislation provisions are unambiguous’ and the submission by Tesco was looking at it with “inappropriate myopia”. (myopia being short sighted).
On the 21/09/2020 Tesco entered a guilty plea.
Well done to those involved at Birmingham City Council for those involved in bringing this case and for their persistence in doing so. Birmingham City Council were also awarded costs of £95.000.
Whilst the FSA has made comments in their news posts on their website about other food businesses who have been prosecuted previously, they appear to have remained silent in this case.
It should be noted that Tesco has been convicted for similar offences on 25/09/2020 at Reading Magistrates’ Court. This occurred in October 2017 at their Warfield, Bracknell store and they were fined £160,000, with additionally having to pay a victim’s surcharge of £170 and costs of £7,756.50.
Again, the FSA appear to have kept silent.
Link below to that story.
https://www.bracknell-forest.gov.uk/news/2020/09/tesco-fined-£160000-out-date-food
Sainsbury’s reached the FSA’s threshold of 7% of fresh chickens that had 1,000 colony forming units per gram (CFU/g) of Campylobacter in the last quarter of 2020.
Sainsbury’s has not done this badly since 2015 in terms of these results.
Some experts argue that there is no safe limit or thresholds in terms of Campylobacter.
We note that the FSA themselves stopped publishing these Campylobacter results from the top nine supermarkets in the second quarter of 2019 - silence again from the FSA.
The FSA Commissioned a report by ICF Consulting Services Limited entitled “Evaluating the use of remote assessments by local authorities for regulating food businesses” which was published in March this year.
Whilst remote audits are understandable in a pandemic, I do not believe they are the way forward long term as even in this very small sample trial, the report showed that both of the two premises that also had a physical inspection, appeared to have failed to live up to the expectations given by the food businesses to the local authorities in the remote audits.
Also, the report indicated that some local authority staff felt that it caused them more work rather than a physical inspection of the premises and the potential risk to public health associated with problems being missed during a remote audit was deemed to be high.
Thank you for your continued help and support.
Stay safe.