Nicholls Meats taking legal advice over food alert
The warning urged consumers not to eat the affected lines, stating: "The products could pose a risk of food poisoning."
The article was based on a food alert issued by the FSA on December 22 2016, which was addressed to Heads of Environmental Health Services via Lead Officer for Food Safety and Directors of Trading Standards. The FSA also advised that the notice be copied to all Local Authority Officers with a possible interest.
It highlighted 'Pork stuffing products and pork cocktail sausages (due to extended use-by dates, inadequate temperature controls, labelling and traceability contraventions)'.
The notice cautioned: "that a number of pork stuffing products and pork cocktail sausages, found on sale at different shops trading as Nicholls Meats Ltd in the Norfolk area have use-by dates that have been extended beyond those set by the manufacturers without appropriate scientific evidence".
"These products may not have been kept under the correct temperature control, had been previously frozen and are also the subject of a number of labelling and traceability conventions."
Local authorities
"The local authorities with premises located in these areas have already visited the Nicholls Meats store that were [sic] known to stock these products and have taken steps to ensure that they have been removed from sale and destroyed. However, it is believed that a number of products may have been sold to the final consumer. Therefore the FSA is informing consumers who have bought these products not to consume them."
According to Michael Wright, owner of the butchers, the wording of the follow-up article in the FSA's News and updates section of its website referring to the alert - 'Consumers warned about pork products sold by Nicholls Meats' - was "scaremongering" and could be interpreted more generally. The FSA said it has no intention on ammending it.
"They [FSA] said pork products, which kind of freaked everyone out," Wright said. "Everybody was thinking it was pork legs, pork loins and everything.
"It hurt us financially over Christmas. It cost us about £14,000."
It is understood that the incident arose when Nicholls Meats purchased a consignment of surplus stuffings, made in November 2015, with an agreement with the supplier that all products would be used by either December 2015 or December 2016 if the products were kept at a temperature of under -20°C.
Defrosted
Wright said that Nicholls Meats agreed the products could be defrosted and given five to 10 days' life, which the Environmental Health Officer (EHO) was made aware of. When three pallets were pulled from storage, it was noticed that about 20 cases had a use-by date of 2014 and were subsequently not put into the supply chain.
These products were left out of the fridge and there was no intention to sell them, Nicholls Meats said. Following on from these developments, the company took the decision to recall all stuffings, stuffing balls and cocktail sausages originally in the consignment from all of its stores and from the stock in the cold store. It claims this happened three days prior to the FSA releasing its statement.
"We would never put our customers' health at risk," said Wright. "We would never sell unsafe food - hence why we removed it from stock as soon as that issue had been noted. We would never compromise on food safety. Never."
The consumer warning had had a damaging impact on the business, according to Wright. "We are taking legal advice to challenge the FSA and our supplier," he said. "At the end of the day, we paid £7,000 for this produce."
Wright claimed that, when selling the product, the supplier had agreed to the extension of shelf-life. "We wouldn't have spent £7,000 on an annual product - which we only sell once a year - if we couldn't have the extension for the following year."
A comment is expected from the FSA and the supplier.
