Sale Of Dated Food Costs Asda GBP19,000

Mon, 24 Sep 2007
 
Get the latest prices, codes, vouchers & deals fortnightly.
Supermarket giant Asda has been fined £13,000 for selling out of date food at one of its stores in Coventry .

The grocery retailer was also ordered to pay costs of £6,985 after pleading guilty to 11 offences of displaying items passed their sell-by date in the Brade Drive branch – Coventry’s largest Asda store.

Coventry magistrates’ court yesterday heard how 44 products, including meat, soup, pasta sauces and yoghurt, were found by Trading Standards Officers during a routine inspection on November 27 2006.

By acting swiftly and putting in an early plea, Asda managed to escape paying the maximum fine of £55,000.

Prosecuting lawyer Lee Reynolds said Asda had a system which checked all items on four occasions, but the system had "clearly failed" in this case, and added that there appeared to be no record to prove that checks had actually been carried out on the date in question - November 27.

He highlighted that between April and October 2006 the store's own inspector had discovered over 1,000 out-of-date items.

He said: "The first three checks were clearly not being completed, or were not being completed properly, therefore the store management and head office should have known there was a problem."

In mitigation, Miles Bennett said they the retailer had a "robust" checking system in place, but the mistakes were down to basic human errors.

Rachel Binny, of Coventry Trading Standards, commented: "This case and its subsequent result shows how seriously the offences are taken."

"It is important for businesses to ensure the safety of food which is available for sale to members of the public," she added.

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.