British supermarket Wm Morrison Plc has been hit with a £18,000 fine after a complaint was lodged following the sale of a meat ravioli product that had been wrongly labelled as vegetarian.
The grocery retailer, based in Gain Lane Bradford, was ordered to pay costs of £1,981.41 at Northampton magistrates court after pleading guilty to two charges of contravening the Food Safety Act 1990.
The initial complaint was made by a customer who bought two tins of Morrisons own brand ‘Meat free Ravioli in Tomato Sauce – suitable for vegetarians’, from a store in Northampton. An investigation by Northamptonshire County Council’s trading standards team followed which led to the supermarket’s prosecution.
The customer told how he had been a vegetarian for the past 23 years and was ‘unimpressed, disgusted and disappointed’ to find meat in the ravioli product, which had been manufactured and packed in Italy .
Councillor Liz Tavener, cabinet member for community safety said, “Food labels are there so that consumers can get the information they need to know before they buy. This is important not just for health reasons, but also for people who follow specific diets or have food allergies .”
“In this case, someone who was vegetarian unwittingly purchased a product containing meat; this falls well below the standards that consumers can expect and would not have happened if appropriate action had been taken by the supermarket following earlier complaints from other customers.”
She concluded, “Thanks to trading standards, the product has now been withdrawn from Morrisons supermarkets.”
A spokesman for Morrisons responded by saying, “We take our responsibilities as retailers very seriously and the integrity of all the products that we sell is of paramount importance to us.
“We now have revised procedures in place. On this occasion we were let down by our supplier and would like to apologise to all customers who purchased the product.”
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