Butcher declines to appear at inquiry

Feb 14 2008 by Catherine Evans, Rhymney Valley Express

WILLIAM Tudor will not give evidence at the public inquiry despite repeated invitations to provide a statement.

Opening the hearing in Cardiff, senior counsel to the inquiry James Eadie QC said, of Tudor declining to provide a statement: “That is his choice.

“There is evidence from experts, evidence from employees and others gathered at the time by the police.

“Moreover, by his guilty plea, he has accepted at least the central thrust of the case the local authorities made against him.”

Mr Eadie said the only thing to connect all the schools involved in the outbreak was meat from Tudor’s company, John Tudor & Son.

Two routine inspections were carried out by Environmental Health and two follow-up visits were made to his Bridgend premises before the 2005 outbreak.

The butcher was awarded a 12-month licence on August 3, 2005, with the first symptoms of E.coli 0157 appearing on September 10.

Three children were taken to Prince Charles Hospital, Merthyr Tydfil, on September 13 after suffering blood-stained diarrhoea.

An outbreak was declared on September 16. Mr Eadie said that by the following day “it had become apparent that the one thing all cases had in common was that they had eaten school meals”.

Parents and GPs were given information on how to handle a suspected case and schools were thoroughly cleaned. Schools stayed open but they were given guidance on hand washing and hygiene.

Tudor’s butchers, by now closed, was identified and inspected on September 19 and 20.

Mr Eadie told the inquiry that the same set of scales and vacuum packing equipment was being used for both raw and cooked meat.

During the inspection the vacuum packing machine was underneath the shop’s electric fly killer. Mr Eadie, reading from evidence gathered for Tudor’s prosecution, said: “Cross contamination of cooked meat by bacteria on raw meat was an almost certainty on the evidence of the practices in this defendant’s premises.”

Following a police investigation the CPS decided not to bring a separate charge of gross negligence manslaughter.

Mr Eadie said some affected families might be considering whether there are viable legal challenges to that decision.

The E.coli outbreak was not declared over until December 20, 2005.

The six-week public inquiry began on Tuesday with a moment’s silence for Mason Jones.

Chair of in the inquiry microbiologist Professor Hugh Pennington said Mason was “very much in my mind”.