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Part Four
Improvement
Operations in practice Cadbury’s salmonella outbreak 1
In June 2007, Cadbury, founded by a Quaker family
in 1824, and now part of Cadbury Schweppes, one of
the world’s biggest confectionery companies, was fined
£1 million plus costs of £152,000 for breaching food
safety laws in a national salmonella outbreak that
infected 42 people, including children aged under 10,
who became ill with a rare strain of Salmonella
montevideo. ‘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.’ One prominant lawyer announced that
‘Despite Cadbury’s attempts to play down this significant
fine, make no mistake it was intended to hurt and is
one of the largest of its kind to date. This reflects no
doubt the company’s high profile and the length of time
over which the admitted breach took place, but will also
send out a blunt warning to smaller businesses of the
government’s intentions regarding enforcement of
food safety laws.’
Before the hearing, the company had, in fact,
apologized, offering its ‘sincere regrets’ to those
affected, and pleaded guilty to nine food safety offences.
But at the beginning of the incident it had not been
so open: one of the charges faced by Cadbury, which
said it had cooperated fully with the investigation,
admitted that it failed to notify the authorities of
positive tests for salmonella as soon as they were
known within the company. While admitting its mistakes,
a spokesman for the confectioner emphasized that
the company had acted in good faith, a point that
was supported by the judge when he dismissed a
prosecution suggestion that Cadbury had introduced
the procedural changes that led to the outbreak simply
as a cost-cutting measure. Cadbury, through its lawyers,
said: ‘Negligence we admit, but we certainly do not
admit that this was done deliberately to save money and
nor is there any evidence to support that conclusion.’
The judge said Cadbury had accepted that a new testing
system, originally introduced to improve safety, was
a ‘distinct departure from previous practice’, and was
‘badly flawed and wrong’. In a statement Cadbury said:
‘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. The processes that led to this failure ceased
from June last year and will never be reinstated.’
The company was not only hit by the fine and court
costs, it had to bear the costs of recalling one million
bars that may have been contaminated, and face private
litigation claims brought by its consumers who were
affected. Cadbury said it lost around £30 million because
of the recall and subsequent safety modifications,
not including any private litigation claims. The London
Times reported on the case of Shaun Garratty, one of the
people affected. A senior staff nurse, from Rotherham,
he spent seven weeks in hospital critically ill and now
he fears that his nursing career might be in jeopardy.
The Times reported him as being ‘pleased that Cadbury’s
had admitted guilt but now wants to know what the
firm is going to do for him’. Before the incident, it said, he
was a fitness fanatic and went hiking, cycling, mountain
biking or swimming twice a week. He always took
two bars of chocolate on the trips, usually a Cadbury’s
Dairy Milk and a Cadbury’s Caramel bar. He also ate
one as a snack each day at work. ‘My gastroenterologist
told me if I had not been so fit I would have died’, said
Mr. Garratty. ‘Six weeks after being in hospital they
thought my bowel had perforated and I had to have a
laparoscopy. I was told my intestines were inflamed
and swollen.’ Even after he returned to work he has not
fully recovered. According to one medical consultant,
the illness had left him with a form of irritable bowel
syndrome that could take 18 months to recover.
Source: Science Photo Library Ltd