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Cadbury faces sentencing over salmonella scare

13/07/2007

Confectionery maker Cadbury will be sentenced today over a salmonella scare which led to the recall of more than a million chocolate bars last summer.

Last month the company pleaded guilty to breaching food and hygiene regulations in relation to the incident.

It is now facing unlimited fines over the case brought by Birmingham city council, which alleged that Cadbury had allowed "unsafe" chocolate bars to be sold in shops and had failed to notify the appropriate authorities of the health scare.

A statement issued by Cadbury ahead of its last court hearing, in Birmingham on June 15th, confirmed that the company was also facing separate charges brought by Hereford Council over operations at its factory in Marlbrook.

The company has apologised for failing to realise that a leaking pipe at the Herefordshire factory posed a risk to health.

"Mistakenly, we did not believe that there was a threat to health and thus any requirement to report the incident to the authorities," Cadbury said last month.

"We accept that this approach was incorrect," added the company, which says it has now spent more than £20 million in the UK on "rigorous" new safety control procedures.

Cadbury has estimated that the product recall cost the company up to £35 million in sales revenue and wiped as much as £10 million off its profits for 2006.


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