Posted on 07/13/2007 6:51:57 PM PDT by blam
Cadbury's let salmonella get into bars
By Nick Britten
Last Updated: 2:05am BST 14/07/2007
Cadbury Schweppes deliberately allowed salmonella to contaminate its chocolate bars in order to save money, a court was told yesterday.
Thirty people became ill after eating infected chocolate
The Birmingham-based company triggered a major salmonella outbreak last June, which left 30 people ill and three in hospital, after changing its testing systems from a zero-tolerance policy to one in which food containing an "allowable" level of the bacteria was permitted.
Birmingham Crown Court heard that chocolate was easily contaminated by salmonella and Cadbury felt it was wasting money by destroying food containing low levels of the food-poisoning bacteria.
During the scare it was forced to recall more than one million infected chocolate bars which under the old system would not even have been allowed to go on sale.
Barry Berlin, prosecuting, said until 2003 Cadbury had destroyed any chocolate which tested positive for salmonella, adopting an approach that "no amount of testing will make a positive result go away".
He said they then switched to an "utterly inappropriate" system involving "what they believed to be an allowable tolerance level".
He added: "They sought to save money from wastage by allowing a tolerance for salmonella in their food. Large quantities of product were being destroyed and Cadbury's were looking for ways of avoiding that and that's what they did."
Mr Berlin said there was no safe level for salmonella cells in ready-to-eat products and that the organism could survive in chocolate for years.
The court also heard that chocolate acted as a protective layer for salmonella organisms, shielding them from acid in the stomach.
He told Birmingham Crown Court: "Cadbury knew perfectly well that outbreaks of salmonella had been associated with very low levels in chocolate."
The court heard that in early 2006 the problem was so endemic that Cadbury staff were dealing with "daily" salmonella-related problems, and were referring to instances of contamination by an alphabetical series of codewords rather than using what they referred to as the "s-word".
Mr Berlin said Cadbury closed its eyes to what should have been "glaringly obvious" risks.
Last summer's outbreak was traced to a leaking pipe in its factory in Marlbrook, Herefordshire, which dripped water containing the rare Montevideo strain on to a conveyor belt containing chocolate crumb - used to make bars and Easter eggs.
The firm's barrister, Anthony Scrivener, QC, told a previous hearing that it had already spent £20 million on improvements, including changes to quality control procedures.
Cadbury has admitted three charges brought under food and hygiene regulations, including an offence of putting "unsafe" chocolate on the market and one of failing to inform the relevant authorities immediately about the potential dangers posed by the contamination.
The company has also admitted six further breaches of food safety and hygiene laws relating to the condition of the Marlbrook factory between February 2006 and November 2006. It will be sentenced on Monday.
After yesterday's hearing a Cadbury spokesman said: "We have apologised for this and do so again today."
Importers are companies too and so can be sued.
I haven’t seen a flurry of lawsuits but I bet the liberal media, lawyers, and many other vermin are and have been looking for any way to sue these companies. I don’t want to give these cretins ideas on what they may be trying to do .
So if all the fear mongering in the liberal media were true then we would see thousands of these lawsuits every day.
Many trillions of pieces of food get sold in the U.S. every year. If even one of these is tainted then the liberal media will find it and blast it all over the airwaves. 1 part out of a trillion being bad is incredible reliability but the media could make it seem like the sky is falling. But nothing can be absolutely perfect. These companies are extremely reliable much more so that government idiots in the FDA.
Just like Edwards sued those doctors by making up lies I am sure they will sue these companies.
Corporations have to pay minimum wage,union wages, union benefits, matching social security tax, etc.
In addition the government tells corporations who they can hire as in affirmative action.
Corporations can’t build a plant anywhere without going through years of approvals by the EPA,environmental groups etc. as a result many haven’t been able to build refineries, nuclear power plants , etc.
Now corporations have to prove to the media and Democrats how green they are so that they let them stay in business.
Corporations get sued everyday by lawyers and idiots pretending some made up sickness just like Edwards did.
No wonder corporations are moving their plants overseas.I would too.If I owned a company i wouldn’t want to be harassed daily by all of these government agencies and pay all these taxes etc.
The FDA is worthless , but some common sense labelling laws are in order .
My concern is the Country of Origin labelling, so that I can make an informed decision .
I absolutely support laws that make companies list where a product is manufactured. I hope for the day that it becomes mandatory for companies to list the countries of origin for all of the ingredients in food/supplement products .
I want to know if i’m consuming products containing wheat from China or green onions from Mexico .
I also want to know if my tires are made in China before it’s too late .
http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/27/autos/chinese_tire_recall/index.htm
You said : “The FDA is worthless”
Finally I agree with something you say.
You also don’t realize that you are quoting CNN which is also worthless. I don’t trust the fear mongering the liberal media does on global warming, “pollution”, or “tainted food” etc.
In fact I don’t believe a single thing in the liberal mainstream media .
Government screws taxpayers. Public corporations screw stockholders. Time Warner did something which caused them to pay a billion dollar fine. Was the SEC just picking on a public corporation or was something done to be concerned about? Well, if the truth be known something criminal was done and the victims were probably stockholders. But a corrupt company and a corrupt bureaucracy crafted a deal by which some white collar boys were bought a get out of jail card for a billion dollars paid ultimately by stockholders and passed on to the real suckers called consumers. Too many corporations in America are run for the pleasure and profit of those who run the corporations not those who nominally own the public corporations called stockholders. I do trust corporations more than goverment but by not much of a margin.
That tire recall is found on many sources .
I tend to find it surprising that the MSM would dare criticize imports from these countries. Their motivation can probably be traced to making the current administration look bad. It would never get reported with a Dim in the W.H. , which is unfortunate .
Compared to what is the question? Better having an imperfect FDA than no FDA. Better having an imperfect government than no government. We also have private companies that have the incentive structure you raised to not get sued etc. All your points about companies are valid as well. But its not a choice or one or the other. The FDA is valid government function. I don't view the FDA is anymore "evil" and "corrupt" than the rest of our imperfect society and government. Where there are people there's imperfection.
And I don't trust Chinese or Mexican products as being as safe as U.S. products and I'm sure most people in this country feel that way.
Ping.
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