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Tesco fined for mouldy food
By Jonathan Prynn And Isabel Oakeshott , Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 15.11.04
Tesco has been fined £25,000 after one of its flagship stores was found to be infested with mice and selling mouldy food.
The fine, one of the biggest ever handed out for breaches of food safety rules, will come as a huge embarrassment to Britain's biggest supermarket chain.
The store at New Malden in south-west London, one of Tesco's biggest, was taken to court by council inspectors following a series of customer complaints. Details emerged today of an extraordinary litany of failures at the 10-year-old superstore. The company was fined:
The fine for breaches of the Food Safety Act, food safety regulations and food labelling regulations was handed down at Wimbledon magistrates court last week. The company was fined £25,000 in total and ordered to pay council legal costs of £5,550.
Linda Kirby, Merton council's cabinet member for environmental quality, said: "All stores have a responsibility to ensure hygiene and safety standards are met and Tesco is no exception. Our environmental health officers will continue to regularly monitor the store."
The sentence is a public relations disaster. Over the past decade Tesco has overtaken Sainsbury's through aggressive
pricing, rapid expansion and
painstaking research. It is expected this financial year to become the first British retailer to push pre-tax profits past £2billion. Last week, chief executive Sir Terry Leahy was voted businessman of the year.
A Tesco spokesman said today: "Our daily procedures and checks are of the highest standards in the industry. The store in question was undergoing a major refit which led to some isolated problems that have now been dealt with."
However, a Merton spokeswoman said the local authority "was aware of a long history of problems at the store due to numerous consumer complaints and continuous problems identified by inspections".
