'Light touch' at E.coli abattoir

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Vets inspecting a slaughterhouse which supplied the butcher responsible for an E.coli outbreak were "told to adopt a light touch", an inquiry has heard.

A series of reports in 2003 and 2004 showed recurrent problems at JE Tudor in Treorchy, Rhondda, including broken windows resulting in flies.

But a vet told the inquiry into the 2005 south Wales outbreak colleagues described the owner as "difficult".

Alvaro Pastoriza said a "heavy-handed" approach would not have done any good.

A boy of five died in the outbreak in schools and 150 adults and children became ill.

The abattoir was run by the cousin of William Tudor, the Bridgend butcher jailed for supplying contaminated meat.

Mr Pastoriza, a vet employed by the Meat Hygiene Service, told the Cardiff public inquiry he was "overwhelmed by the very old and very poor condition" of the slaughterhouse when he first went there in 2003.

He had been warned by colleagues that owner Billy Tudor was "a difficult man with a very, very difficult relationship with anyone saying something he didn't want to hear".

Mason Jones, five, died after eating contaminated cooked meat

Mr Pastoriza said problems were raised with the slaughterhouse managers, but "a heavy-handed approach would have risked alienating the operatives, achieving worse compliance."

The Cardiff public inquiry earlier heard that the slaughterhouse had the worst hygiene record in the UK, scoring 11 out of 100 in a hygiene assessment in August 1994.

But a recommendation to revoke its licence at that time was declined by the then secretary of state for Wales, the inquiry heard.

Meat hygiene inspectors also said that conditions at the abattoir were "deteriorating rapidly" in the years leading up to the outbreak.

Problems at the abattoir included flies. Cracked walls and flaking paint made cleaning "very difficult".

The inquiry, led by microbiologist Professor Hugh Pennington, has been going on in Cardiff since the second week of February.

It has already heard how butchers John Tudor and Son of Bridgend had supplied schools in the south Wales valleys for almost a decade before meat from its factory carried E.coli through the food chain.