Cadbury 'sorry' over bug outbreak

Cadbury, described by a judge at Birmingham Crown Court as a trusted household name, said it unreservedly accepted the financial penalty and had already spent £20 million to prevent a repeat of the poisoning.

Passing sentence, Recorder James Guthrie QC criticised the Bournville-based confectioner for its "lack of scrutiny" in adopting a new product testing system which introduced an "allowable tolerance level" of salmonella contamination.

Recorder Guthrie also ordered Cadbury, which pleaded guilty to nine food safety breaches at earlier hearings, to pay costs of more than £152,000.

The charges, which included a failure by Cadbury to notify the authorities of positive tests for salmonella, were brought by Birmingham City Council and Herefordshire Council after a total of 42 people fell ill in the first half of last year.

Recorder Guthrie 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, including a leaking pipe which was the source of the salmonella.

Birmingham Crown Court was told last week how Cadbury failed to inform the authorities of dozens of tests which showed its processed materials and ready-to-eat products contained the salmonella organism. The court also heard that the food poisoning alert followed a decision by Cadbury in 2003 to change its product testing systems to allow a "tolerance level" of salmonella cells in its chocolate. The judge said everyone who opened and ate a bar produced by Cadbury, or gave one to a child as a treat, did so in the belief that it was entirely safe.

Recorder Guthrie also said that Cadbury now accepted that its new testing system, which was based on a misunderstanding of scientific literature, was badly flawed and wrong.

In a statement, Cadbury - which was founded by a Quaker family in 1824 - apologised 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."