Cadbury fined £1m over salmonella outbreak

Jul 16 2007 By Gary Marks, Birmingham Mail

CHOCOLATE-maker Cadbury was fined £1 million today following a national salmonella outbreak which left three victims in hospital.

The Birmingham-based confectioner, which pleaded guilty to nine food safety offences at earlier hearings, was also ordered to pay costs of more than £152,000 by a judge at the city's Crown Court.

The charges, which included a failure by Cadbury to notify the authorities of positive tests for salmonella, were brought after a total of 42 people fell ill during last year's outbreak.

Recorder James Guthrie QC fined Cadbury £500,000 for putting unsafe chocolate on sale and £100,000 on each of two other charges brought by Birmingham City Council.

The judge also fined the firm £50,000 for each of six offences relating to food safety breaches at its factory in Marlbrook, Herefordshire.

Recorder Guthrie said he did not believe that Cadbury had made a conscious decision to cut costs when it altered its "zero tolerance" policy regarding salmonella cells in its products.

"I regard this as a serious case of negligence," the judge said.

"It therefore needs to be marked as such to emphasise the responsibility and care which the law requires of a company in Cadbury's position."

Solicitor Sallie Booth, of Irwin Mitchell, was representing 12 people affected by the contaminated chocolate.

She said in a statement: "Our clients are relieved that Cadbury have pleaded guilty to the charges brought against them, and in doing so accept their responsibility to the public."

"The £1 million fine sends a clear message that companies who have a great deal of responsibility for protecting public health cannot afford to ignore a potentially dangerous situation and cannot take a risk with the public's health."

"Whilst it is accepted that there is no safe level of salmonella in ready-to-eat food products, the Montevideo strain of salmonella is particularly dangerous to the most vulnerable people in society, which include children, who are the main consumers of chocolate.

"Public safety must come before profit."

Cadbury Ltd apologised today and offered its "sincere regrets" to the people who were taken ill.

A spokesman said: "Quality has always been at the heart of our business, but the process we followed in the UK in this instance has been shown to be unacceptable.

"We have apologised for this and do so again today. In particular, we offer our sincere regrets and apologies to anyone who was made ill as a result of this failure. We have spent over £20 million in changing our procedures to prevent this ever happening again."

The spokesman stressed the company had acted in good faith.

"Mistakenly, we did not believe that there was a threat to health and thus any requirement to report the incident to the authorities - we accept that this approach was incorrect."

He added: "We sincerely regret these lapses and have undertaken a full review of our quality procedures to learn lessons and ensure that our consumers can rely on the highest levels of processes and standards."