Food inspection failures allowed Wales E.coli outbreak

Food safety inspectors face scathing criticism from professor Hugh Pennington’s public inquiry report into the largest outbreak of Escherichia coli​ (E.coli) in Wales in 2005.

Pennington’s comments, which have just been published, have been supported by Unison, the UK’s largest public sector union. It warned that bad practice and meat contamination was even worse now than in the South Wales E.coli​ outbreak.

The E.coli​ scare in Wales resulted in 118 confirmed cases and the death of a five year old boy. As predicted by Food Manufacture​ last year​, Pennington’s report criticised failures of environmental health officers (EHOs) from Bridgend to properly monitor the premises of John Tudor and Son. The business supplied the contaminated cold cooked meat - the main source of the outbreak - to local schools.
Pennington also blamed the Food Standards Agency in Wales for failing to audit the inspectors properly, relying too much on a “systems based” audit. And he slammed the process by which contracts were awarded by local councils to supply schools in the area. “The process by which the contracts were awarded in 1998 and 2002 was seriously flawed in relation to food safety.”
He went further by criticising the Meat Hygiene Service’s (MHS’s) poor procedures for not correcting obvious failures at JE Tudor’s abattoir from where the contaminated meat originally came. “The likelihood of meat becoming contaminated with E.coli O157 at the abattoir would have been significantly reduced if the meat hygiene regulations that were in force in 2005 had been followed and enforced,” he said. “There were big shortcomings in relations to both.”
He went on: “Over a prolonged period, the MHS failed to perform effectively its overall enforcement function in relation to the abattoir. Despite knowledge of longstanding, repetitive, failures, the abattoir was allowed to continue functioning in breach of legislative requirements.”
He stressed that responsibility for the outbreak lay squarely on the owner of the businesses, William Tudor, who lied to inspectors and was subsequently sentenced to 12 months imprisonment following a criminal prosecution. But he added: “Even so, the inspections did not assess or monitor the business’s management of food safety as well as they could, or should, have done.”
He added: “Issues were missed. Those that were spotted were lost in the system because there was no way of alerting other EHOs to issues or concerns for subsequent inspections. Failures around the hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) plan were the most important. The fundamental flaws in John Tudor & Son’s plan could, and should, have been picked up.”
Pennington said the inspectors focused insufficiently on identifying and assessing practices and procedures to ensure that the plan was being applied.
Among 24 recommendations, Pennington called for more resources to be made available to food businesses in Wales to improve their understanding and use of HACCP procedures.
However, the main focus of his recommendations was on improving inspection practices. He particularly highlighted training inspectors in HACCP; unannounced visits to premises; changes to ‘light touch’ enforcement; and the need for independent audits of businesses supplying high-risk foods.
“Authorities must come down hard on businesses that present serious risks to health and those that persistently fail to comply with food hygiene and food safety requirements,” said Pennington.
Simon Watson, Unison’s national officer for meat, said: “It is absolutely crucial that the industry acts on these recommendations to restore public confidence. We welcome ‘light touch’ enforcement being reviewed, as it is clear that it simply isn’t working.
“The industry must not be allowed to inspect itself and we are deeply concerned that the government is pushing the EU to allow for more self-regulation in plants.
“Meat hygiene inspectors should be allowed to get on with their job of protecting the public from bad meat and not be intimidated or harassed by owners.”