Insufficient Food Safety Resources Blamed for 2005 E.Coli Outbreak in Wales
A Welsh outbreak of E.Coli in 2005 due to unsafe food had led to the illness of over a hundred people and the death of a child. Sharon Mills, whose five year old son Mason Jones was killed in the outbreak has vowed to campaign to increase sentences of those responsible for problems related to food safety.
Professor Hugh Pennington, chairperson of the team inquiring the matter, said in his report that the butcher William Tudor associated in the matter had a habit of significantly disregarding food safety, which led to the outbreak in South Wales in 2005. Tudor was jailed in September 2007 after pleading guilty of mismanagement of food safety.
Professor Pennington also pointed out that the food safety inspectors had failed in their duty, as there was sufficient evidence indicating that Tudor was compromising food safety. However, the job of the inspectors was made much more difficult as Tudor used false records and statements to evade them.
The Meat Hygiene Service also came in for criticism as despite knowing that the abattoir supplying Tudor had failed in the past, they allowed him to operate his business as usual.
The investigation team has recommended that better training facilities should be made available to the inspectors so that they can be more effective, and that the inspections should be kept secret, as announcing them well in advance give the businesses time to prepare for them and in some cases, they are able to fabricate data to avoid prosecution.
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