January 25, 2008

Tesco=Fresh and Easy

Tesco fined for selling out-of-date food

By Jenny Brentnall - Crime reporter

SUPERMARKET giant Tesco was yesterday fined ore than £23,000 for selling out-of-date or unlabelled food at stores across Gwent.

Five stores in Newport (Spytty and Cardiff Road), Ebbw Vale, Pontypool and Abertillery were involved in the case.

Abergavenny magistrates heard the out-of-date food, which posed a potential risk to public health, included cheese which was six days past its use-by date.

Tesco pleaded guilty to 25 breaches of food labelling legislation. A further 23 cases were ordered to lie on file.

The investigation by trading standards officers from was led by Torfaen council and over 100 items were originally bought to test the company's procedures between August and October 2006.

As well as being fined £23,325 Tesco was ordered to pay their £30,000 legal costs - a total pay-out of over £50,000.

District Judge Gerwyn Watkins told the court the charges represented a "systematic failure" by Tesco.

Across the five stores, 19 items were one day over the use-by date, one item was two days past the use-by date, two items were six days past the use-by date and three items were unlabelled.

Torfaen councillor Glyn Caron said he hoped the court case would act as "a wake-up call" to all food retailers.

He said: "The various items of food purchased from Tesco had the potential to cause serious harm to anyone who consumed them."

He also said the case served as a reminder to consumers to check use-by dates.

A Tesco spokeswoman said: "We have strict procedures in place to prevent this sort of thing happening and are very sorry that these were not followed in these instances.

Food was highly perishable

Much of the food involved was highly perishable and was therefore likely to pose a serious risk to human health. Items found across the five supermarkets included: cheese, tuna and sweetcorn pasta, coleslaw, king prawns with marie rose dip, minced beef and onion pies, beansprouts, profiteroles, onion bhajis, carrot soup, rib eye steak, gammon, prawn and egg roll.