E.coli staff 'worked while sick'

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Staff at a butcher which supplied meat at the centre of a south Wales E.coli outbreak turned up for work with stomach bugs, a public inquiry heard.

The inquiry was also told that cleaning of plant equipment at the Bridgend company was "completely inadequate".

More than 150 children and adults fell ill and a five-year-old died in 2005.

William Tudor, who ran the company John Tudor & Son, was jailed for a year after admitting placing unsafe food on the market.

In its first week of evidence the inquiry has been told that dead flies, woodlice and insects were found on the butcher's premises.

The hearing has now been presented with a report by food research expert Professor Chris Griffith, which was commissioned following the outbreak of the E.coli O157 strain.

It affected 44 schools across south Wales, making it the largest outbreak of its kind in Wales, and the second biggest in the UK.

Mason Jones, five, died after eating contaminated cooked meat

Mason Jones, from Deri, near Bargoed, died in hospital in Bristol while being treated for E.coli poisoning.

The report from Prof Griffith noted that staff at the butchers continued to work at the premises even when suffering from diarrhoea.

It also said soap was not available for employees to wash their hands.

Prof Griffiths told the inquiry the culture at the premises was "dominated by saving money".

He said there was a lot of evidence that reusing rejected meat and cutting off pieces of unfit meat for use in faggots was considered more important than food safety.

"There was a culture of 'I don't want to waste anything that will detract from my bottom line' and that takes priority over anything else," Prof Griffiths added.

Witnesses also reported staff walking from the raw sector to the cooked sector with bloody wellingtons, a clingfilm machine stored in toilets used to wrap faggots, and storage of diesel with raw meat.

An old meat slicer was described as rusty-looking and covered with meat juices, and another witness noted rotting meat blocking drains.

Insects

The inquiry has heard that the same set of scales and vacuum packing equipment was being used for both raw and cooked meat, and that the vac-packing machine was directly underneath the site's electric fly-killer.

Senior counsel to the inquiry James Eadie QC told the inquiry on Tuesday that inspectors came away from Tudor's with four pages of contraventions of food safety regulations, including dirt and dead insects, after the visits during the outbreak in September 2005.

He said the inquiry would have to consider whether procedures in Bridgend were appropriate and adequate to ensure an effective inspection regime.

The Crown Prosecution Service decided not to bring a separate charge of gross negligence manslaughter after a police investigation. Mr Eadie said some affected families might be considering whether there were viable legal challenges to that decision.

There were 157 probable cases of the E.coli 0157 strain and 118 confirmed during the outbreak, which was declared on 16 September 2005 and declared over on 20 December that year.