UK-wide sandwich supplier fined for serious hygiene failures

A sandwich supplier to supermarkets and corner shops across the UK has been fined almost £47,000 for breaking hygiene rules.

Bread Spread Ltd, based at Southall in London, and its director Premalkumar Patel pleaded guilty to 21 counts of serious food hygiene failures at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court on March 4.

The court heard that the company had mis-labelled sandwiches with the wrong shelf life and its products were the subject of a national recall issued to protect the public.

The company repeatedly ignored warnings to raise its hygiene standards and failed to comply with improvement notices from Ealing Council officers.

On May 7 last year, the UK Health Security Agency made Ealing Council aware that the potentially life-threatening bacterium listeria monocytogenes had been detected in two Bread Spread Ltd-produced sandwiches.

The bacteria was also present in a swab sample taken from a tomato slicer, even after it had been cleaned and disinfected.

During a visit to the factory the next day, council officers declared food production at Bread Spread to be an “imminent risk of injury to health” and served it with a Hygiene Emergency Prohibition Notice to immediately stop production of all ready-to-eat foods.

Despite this, a further unannounced visit later in May found the business still producing foods under poor hygiene conditions.

On May 11, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) issued a country-wide recall of all sandwiches and salads produced by Bread Spread under the brand names Bread Spread, Orbital Foods and Perfect Bite.

However Bread Spread’s poor traceability records caused delays in quickly removing potentially unsafe food from the market.

Listeria monocytogenes usually results in mild infection for healthy adults, with flu-like symptoms or gastroenteritis.

However, vulnerable groups including pregnant women and their unborn babies, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems face a heightened risk of illnesses such as meningitis or septicaemia.

For those groups, it is linked to a 20% to 30% mortality rate, with 20.6% of reported pregnant cases resulting in miscarriage.

The firm and director Patel were each fined £14,000, with both also ordered to pay a £2,000 victim surcharge.

The company was also ordered to pay £13,835 in prosecution costs.

Manager Ronak Patel pleaded guilty to two charges and received a fine of £673. He was also ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £269.

Kamaljit Nagpal, Ealing Council’s cabinet member for decent living incomes, said: “Thanks to swift and coordinated action by council officers and our partners at national agencies, this business has been held accountable for the filthy conditions in its factory.

“We will always take the strongest possible action against companies which choose to ignore basic safety rules and put their customers at risk.”