Food Standards Agency blames WAG underfunding for delaying report

Feb 29 2008 by Abby Alford, Media Wales

A LACK of money meant problems with the way Bridgend council conducted food hygiene inspections were not made public until after the E.coli outbreak began.

The public inquiry heard the Food Standards Agency Wales – the body charged with inspecting the inspectors – found “deficiencies” in the authority’s environmental health department in February 2004.

The agency’s director Joy Whinney said a report highlighting the issues, which could have helped Bridgend address them, should have been published six weeks later.

But she told the inquiry serious underfunding of the FSA by the Welsh Assembly Government led to staff shortages, which resulted in the report being delayed until October 2005, after E.coli had claimed the life of five-year-old Mason Jones.

The public inquiry has already heard how Bridgend council’s environmental health officers made a string of blunders in the months and years before the outbreak.

They failed to spot Tudor had falsified crucial health and safety records and that he had lied about receiving awards for good hygiene.

One inspector, Angela Coles, also allowed Tudor to continue trading from his Bridgend Industrial Estate premises even though she knew there was a risk of cross contamination.

Addressing Mrs Whinney, senior counsel to the inquiry James Eadie said yesterday, “The reality is that your belief around the time of the outbreak is that you simply did not have the resources to do the job that was required of FSA Wales.”

She replied, “In that respect yes and we repeatedly told the Welsh Assembly Government that.”

Mr Eadie showed the inquiry a table that revealed the FSA in Scotland got almost four times as much money as the FSA in Wales in 2005 and 2006 – £9.7m as opposed to £2.4m.

“So they [Scottish Parliament] regard it as four times more important that Wales,” he said.

Mrs Whinney replied, “I think so. Wales is underfunded compared with other arms of the FSA.”

Her colleague Jane Davies, assistant director and head of enforcement at FSA Wales, told the inquiry yesterday their routine audit of Bridgend council’s environmental health department in 2004 revealed “deficiencies” in procedures.

The FSA found crucial guidelines governing how inspections should be carried out were not in place.

All that existed was a draft document put together before the auditors arrived.

Mrs Davies also said auditors could find no evidence environmental health officers were properly checking butchers’ health and safety records.

She also said the FSA audit team discovered Bridgend council had issued a butcher who was not Tudor with a licence, even though an improvement notice relating to a breach of food safety regulations was outstanding.

Despite this, FSA auditors concluded they were generally satisfied with Bridgend council’s food hygiene performance. But they planned to highlight the problems in their final report, which should have been published in April 2004.

Day 10 of the inquiry also heard how Tudor’s was investigated as the possible source of a salmonella outbreak in Bridgend county in December 2003.

The business had supplied the county’s Meals on Wheels service with cooked turkey and four of the five people who had the same strain of the food poisoning bug had eaten the meals.

A Bridgend council environmental health officer undertook a site visit to Tudor’s at which meat slicing was discussed.

But his report recorded that in addition to Meals on Wheels, Tudor also supplied the same cooked turkey slices to schools and, given the scale of the distribution of the product, the cooked turkey was unlikely to have been the source of the Meals on Wheels outbreak.

The inquiry is due to continue next week with Sharon Mills, mother of E.coli victim Mason Jones, due to give evidence on Thursday.

The inquiry will also examine hygiene within schools.

Butcher appeared in WAG pamphlet promoting best food producers - page 2