Staff worked while ill, inquiry hears

The shop supplied meat at the centre of a south Wales E.coli outbreak and 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 in South Wales during the outbreak and a five-year-old, Mason Jones, died.

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, the inquiry was told dead flies, woodlice and insects were found in the shop at Bridgend.

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.

Prof Griffith report said that staff at the butchers continued to work at the premises even when suffering from diarrhoea, and soap was not available for hand washing.

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

He said there was also 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.

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.

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.

Yesterday, the inquiry heard that inspectors of the premises came away with four pages of contraventions of food safety regulations.

Senior counsel to the inquiry James Eadie QC said the inquiry would have to consider whether procedures in Bridgend were appropriate and adequate to ensure an effective inspection regime.

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