Oral evidence: 2 Sisters and Standards in Poultry Processing, HC 490Wednesday 25 October 2017 [afternoon sitting]

Oral evidence, 25 October 2017.

Witnesses

Jan Britton, Chief Executive, Sandwell Metropolitan Council; Bob Charnley, Trading Standards Officer, Sandwell Metropolitan Council; Jason Feeney CBE, Chief Executive, Food Standards Agency; and Jose Gomez-Luengo, Audit Veterinary Leader, Food Standards Agency, gave evidence.

Chair

Welcome, gentlemen, to our second panel for our inquiry into the food safety issues at the 2 Sisters plant in particular, and generally throughout the industry. Could I please ask you to introduce yourselves, and then we will start taking evidence from you?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

I am Jose Gomez-Luengo, part of Operations Assurance. I work as an audit veterinary lead. I head a team of auditors that visit meat plants, including those of 2 Sisters.

Jason Feeney

I am Jason Feeney. I am the Chief Executive of the Food Standards Agency.

Jan Britton

I am Jan Britton. I am the Chief Executive of Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council.

Bob Charnley

Bob Charnley, and I am Trading Standards Manager for Sandwell Council.

Chair

Thank you very much. I will start with the first question. When were you first made aware of the allegations of malpractice at the 2 Sisters plant at West Bromwich? Jason, I would have thought that is your ball, really.

Jason Feeney

Yes. Thank you, Chair. We were made aware on the Tuesday evening, 26 September. The story ran with ITV and the Guardian on the Thursday, and we found out between 9 pm and 10 pm on the Tuesday, from a third party, that there were allegations being made in respect of the 2 Sisters plant.

Chair

The obvious question to you is that the Food Standards Agency works on intelligence. We were told after the horsegate inquiry that you had a Food Crime Unit. You had many things out there that were going to make sure you had very good intelligence. Why was your intelligence so poor on this occasion?

Jason Feeney

We have got a number of avenues, whether it be employees, whether it be members of the public and others who might want to pass information to the Food Standards Agency. There are a number of ways in which they can do that. We have our normal helpline. We have a dedicated line and a confidential line that members of the public and citizens can contact us on. They can email us. They can contact us through social media. There is a range of ways in which professionals, employees or citizens and members of the public can contact us. We receive information from businesses themselves, we receive information from retailers and, of course, we receive information from colleague agencies, whether that is colleague agencies such as local authorities or others. We had had no intelligence on this particular site that would give us any cause for concern prior to these allegations.

Chair

No intelligence whatsoever, even though, prior, there have been problems? Even though they were not allowing on-the-spot checks, you were not at all worried about this plant. It seems to us quite surreal that this is the situation, because it is not just 2 Sisters that are at fault here; it is the regulatory system as well. Like we said to the panel this morning, it is not just about the process. What are you doing to make sure that, in the future, your intelligence is better? We do not believe that we should be in this situation, and I have had nothing yet to reassure us. We had very little this morning to reassure us that the situation is any better.

Jason Feeney

As Committee members may be aware, we launched our Regulating Our Future programme in the summer. We published the document that I have here, which colleagues may have seen. That outlines how we think we can move regulation forward, so that it is fit for the 21st century and fit for the speed at which the food businesses and food technology move.

Chair

Let me just drill down on the intelligence for a moment. Let us be quite frank and open. The fact that you did not even find out from your intelligence sources that somebody had been into the factory and filmed this back in July and August shows that you do not have any intelligence. Why should we be confident that, in the future, your intelligence is any better than what has failed at the moment?

Jason Feeney

So far, we have had the Food Crime Unit that was established post horsemeat, following Chris Elliott’s report and the recommendations. We have had that for two years. In those two years, we have made 300 referrals to local authorities and other enforcement agencies on the back of intelligence that we have received and captured. Committee members may have picked up on some of the coverage we have had recently, for example on coconut water, where we were acting on intelligence and information that we were receiving from a number of sources to intercept batches of coconut water and have them taken off the market, and work with retailers.

Chair

I do not particularly want to talk about coconut water. The issue is: why were you not investigating a plant that has had problems in the past, which it may have rectified or may not have done? You were not investigating it. How did this happen?

Jason Feeney

I was trying to make the point that we do receive a significant amount of intelligence and we act on it more broadly. If we are narrowing it down in relation to this particular plant, then we had not received any intelligence specific to this particular plant prior to—

Chair

The question is quite a straight one: why was that?

Jason Feeney

We rely on a number of sources and, unless those sources have come forward, then we rely on our inspection regime and our auditing regime to identify and reveal any non-compliances that need to be rectified by the business.

Chair

We talked a great deal about audits this morning, and paperwork, and it obviously did not work, did it? From now on, what is it you will do differently to make sure that your intelligence in the future works?

Jason Feeney

We are continuing to work with industry and we are continuing to work with the industry bodies, so that there is more of a climate of trust, and so that people feel more able to share intelligence. I am absolutely convinced that food businesses and organisations representing food businesses will receive information from time to time that they are not sharing with the Food Standards Agency. Maybe it is a concern about our openness and transparency policy that makes them reluctant to do so, but we are working with them to find ways in which they can provide us information in a safe environment that we can act upon in the interests of citizens.

Chair

Before I bring Alan in, just one last question. I understand that many of the big retailers that buy from this part also do their inspections. They have assurance schemes, along with the Red Tractor and so on and so forth. Why is it that you, the FSA, do not collate all this information and look at it? Surely, that would be one method. You are very good at process, all of you. Why on earth do you not use that process to greater effect? Why is it that so many people are doing audits but nobody seems to know about them?

Jason Feeney

The heart of our Regulating Our Future proposal and how we would like to see regulation move forward is exactly along those lines. We would like to have access to those audits. We would like to have the findings and recommendations of those audits, whether they are through private assurance schemes like Red Tractor or whether they are through retailers or the audits that the business conducts on itself. That would give us a fuller picture as to what the confidence levels are in relation to that particular business.

Chair

Do you need Government regulation for that or could it be done through agreement with industry?

Jason Feeney

No, we need co‑operation. We do not need regulation.

Chair

You will be asking for that, I take it.

Jason Feeney

Yes, we have made it clear, and we are continuing to push on that.

Alan Brown

My question links to that. This morning, one of the representatives from BRC Global Standards said that, to try to improve intelligence-gathering and understand how companies work, he suggested we need to look at the culture of companies. Therefore, that is speaking to employees and getting a real feel for what is happening, rather than what is visual when you do a set-piece audit or a set-piece inspection. I am just wondering if that is something that the Food Standards Agency are looking at as well: how you can get a full understanding of workings and the culture and the pressures that employees are under.

Jason Feeney

You are absolutely right. The culture comes from the top of the organisation. If there is the right culture in the organisation, that would give us confidence about the level of assurance and intervention that we need to take place. If you take one of the allegations in relation to this case, where somebody picks up some chicken meat off the floor and puts it back on the line, the ideal scenario in that situation is when a fellow employee or a supervisor says, “That is not in line with the process we have got here. That is not in line with the procedures. That should go in the animal by-products”. You want that degree of culture, where people think about hygiene and food safety, and recognise the importance of that not just to themselves and their own employment but to the business’s future and the business’s credibility.

Chair

Is that not the real basic of the plant itself? The fact that somebody is there picking up something off the floor in that plant and nobody does anything about it—surely that is fundamental, is it not? If we are going to trust a company, and if we are going to have a certain amount of self-regulation, that must be the very basic of it, must it not?

Jason Feeney

You are absolutely reliant on having the right culture but also having the right frontline management. The culture will set the expectations and how this company behaves. The frontline management is ensuring that employees are complying with those policies and procedures. That is something that the company has to do. The company is primarily and legally responsible for the food they produce and the food they sell. As a regulator with periodic audits and unannounced inspections, we are not there every minute of every day of every shift, so that absolutely has to rely on the business.

Alan Brown

Good culture would be another employee saying, “That is not acceptable. That chicken needs to go in the bin”. What I am getting at with culture is that, clearly, when there are inspections and people monitoring that, it does not happen. It is that other culture and how you get that understanding of what else is going on and what day-to-day working is like rather than when you are there. I am just wondering how you are going to get an understanding of the real workings and the real culture of the company.

Jason Feeney

There is a limit to what you can do by examining the paperwork. From a culture point of view, there is a limit to what value you can get from reading the values statements that are on the noticeboard inside the factory. Where we will get a real feel for that is not just speaking to the management about them having those particular basics in place, but whether those are penetrating into the front line. There is nothing to stop us speaking to frontline employees, and we do. That is particularly the case where we have got a permanent presence. In slaughterhouses and abattoirs, where we have got a permanent veterinary presence and we have got meat inspectors, then we are part of the production line, so you have a very strong feel for what the culture is like at the front end. In plants that we only visit periodically, we have got to use softer techniques, other than just paper review.

Chair

Why in this instance were you not talking to frontline staff? Why are you completely unsighted? You are not giving us an answer, are you? You did not know what was going on in this plant. Why did you not know? You are the Food Standards Agency. You have got all these unannounced inspections. You have got the whole process. Why did you not know?

Jason Feeney

Our audits are scheduled and preannounced, as they are required to be in line with EU regulations. We do unannounced inspections. This plant has been—

Chair

Yes, but we also found out that, by the time you tog up and do all the rest of it, they have probably got between 30 minutes and an hour to put things right before you get there. You are not getting to it, are you?

Jason Feeney

What we cannot do is man-mark every employee on every shift in every factory across the country. What we have to do is periodic inspections and interventions.

Chair

It is risk management, and you should have known the risk. That is where the risk management is wrong and that is why you have to put that risk management right. We have not heard any evidence yet today on that. All you have is a system. The system did not work. What you are not telling us—any of you today—is what you are going to do to change and put it right. We have had absolutely nothing. All you talk about is process, process, process. The process did not work. Is that loud enough and clear enough for you?

Jason Feeney

I was trying to move on to how we might change the process and then you took me back to the individual sites. Our proposals in Regulating Our Future contain exactly those features, so we have a much better registration scheme so we know more about the businesses. We have a segmentation of businesses based on risk: what is the nature of what they produce? What volume do they produce it in? How much confidence have we got in the business? Then you look at a range of assurance measures, including, with co‑operation, access to a range of audits—not just the inspections that we conduct but through third-party assurance bodies as well. That will drive the level of intervention. If you breach that and if you fail to live up to those expectations, then you will be subject to more regular intervention and closer scrutiny. The whole process is designed to do that.

Chair

Even though this factory had a history and even though all of this was found out through an undercover operation, you knew nothing of it. You told us quite clearly when you got here you knew nothing about this until the twenty-something of September. It is just mindboggling.

Jason Feeney

What I said was we had not received any intelligence in relation to this plant. We had the information that we capture as part of our audit inspections and as part of our unannounced inspections. When we did our last audit on 19 July, there were a number of measures that we recommended the plant had to take to improve their procedures. It is not that we were blind in terms of this particular plant. We have an ongoing engagement with this plant. It was not showing up as a high‑risk plant, but there were a number of steps following our audit in July that we asked them to take.

Angela Smith

On that point, the West Bromwich plant was audited, I believe, nine times in July and August by yourselves and other bodies.

Jason Feeney

Yes. That is a figure that has been put out by the company, which must include retailer audits and potentially third-party assurance audits. We audited it once on 19 July.

Angela Smith

Did you have access to the outcomes of those audits?

Jason Feeney

No, we do not routinely have access to retailer audits. The retailers will not show us that.

Angela Smith

Do you think you should have access to those audits?

Jason Feeney

We have set our ambition to work with industry so that they will be more open and transparent about sharing that information.

Angela Smith

Which of the audits that you know about did the plant pass? What problems were identified?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

We do not know in relation to the third-party audits because we do not have access to those.

Angela Smith

The ones you know about, I asked.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

Nine non-compliances had been raised on the last audit, but they were classed as minor. That means that there is no high risk associated with them. They are things that management need to take action to resolve and put right, but we were not concerned in the sense that there was something that would put public health at risk and required immediate action.

Chair

I take it that poultry landing up on the floor and being thrown back on the thing would not be considered minor, would it?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

No, it would not, but we did not see that happening. We have audited the system that the factory does have. They have quite clear signs all over the factory saying that meat on the floor should be put in the waste and should not be used at all. We have seen and we have looked at the training records for staff and the training procedures that include that as an instruction that is given to staff. That is how we assess whether it is compliant or not. If we see things happening, then we will question and we will investigate further as to why this is happening, but if it does not happen when we are there, we cannot investigate why staff pick up meat from the floor when it has not happened at all.

Angela Smith

Can I go back to the audits? You said there were nine problems identified and they were mainly relating to management issues.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

Yes.

Chair

Can we not expand too much on that, Angela, because that is the next question? Just finish off your line of questioning.

Angela Smith

Finish off? I have only just started, Neil.

Chair

Right. Go on, then.

Angela Smith

My point about the management attention is it seems to me that this has been a fairly superficial process that you have identified and followed over those months preceding the publicity that the company received in September. Would you accept that it has been a fairly superficial process that you have followed?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

I would not class it as superficial, no. We do look and we take as long as it takes to look and get an idea as to what the plant performance is like. It is not based only on what we see on the day. We will spend quite a lot of time on the factory floor, just looking at the operations themselves, but we will also spend some time on looking at the management procedures in place, and the documents and records that demonstrate that those procedures are being implemented.

Angela Smith

On that basis, how is it that no audits that you know of found any cause for concern, but a couple of undercover journalists, at broadly the same time, over 12 days found widespread and significant malpractice? How can you explain that?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

There is one easy answer.

Angela Smith

You are the Food Standards Agency, not the management auditing agency.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

Yes. One thing that is easy to explain is, normally, when we come to do an audit—and Jason has alluded to the fact that we need to announce we are going to be coming; we have to do it by law—staff and management will know when we are coming. They will know the date and they will know the time we are going to be starting. Whether or not there is preparation for that, I do not know. We have to assess things as we see them. However, it does not mean that we do not look in detail to what happens on the day. Two undercover journalists can spend a number of days in the factory. We could spend a number of days in the factory as well. I suppose, if you stay there long enough, you may get to see things that you would not normally see. That is possible. If staff know that we are an auditor and we are having a look at the premises and the facilities and the structure and everything, they will probably act differently from the way they might act when they do not know that we are there. In this case, undercover journalists passed themselves as staff members, so they might be able to see things that the regulator will not see during an audit.

Angela Smith

Dr Richard Hyde, an expert in food law at the University of Nottingham, has said—and I quote just the end of the quote here—“There are a basket of potential offences here that the regulators need to look at and decide whether further action is required”. However, the sense I get is not so much that you may not want to take the journalists’ findings seriously but rather that you cannot, and that you are not able to do your job effectively.

Jason Feeney

In relation to this particular incident and these allegations, we launched an investigation on the Friday, the day after the story was publicised. We are conducting that investigation thoroughly. These are complex and serious allegations. We are gathering evidence from a range of sources, including the business itself. We have extended that investigation beyond this particular plant to other 2 Sisters plants within the group. We are making sure that we investigate these allegations as thoroughly and properly as they deserve, because we have a range of enforcement measures available to us, up to and including prosecution, and, therefore, we need to make sure that these allegations are thoroughly investigated.

Angela Smith

Professor Chris Elliott, a food safety academic from Queen’s University Belfast has said he has never seen a plant operate under such poor standards as shown by the video evidence, so I go back to the point and perhaps finish on this. I appreciate that you are investigating, in your terms, thoroughly the matter that we are discussing today, but the point is: are you taking that video evidence seriously? Other academics in the field of food safety law are taking it very seriously. We need to be reassured that the FSA is taking it as seriously as everybody else seems to be?

Jason Feeney

I do not want to repeat myself but we appointed one of our most experienced vets. We appointed the vet that led on our avian‑flu‑outbreak work. He is a very experienced and highly professional vet. He is leading the investigation. As I said, we have extended the investigation beyond this immediate plant to other plants across the 2 Sisters group. We have asked for access to the intelligence that ITV and the Guardian are holding. They have refused to share that with us. I have written to them and requested that intelligence and they have refused to share that with us and said we would have to go to court in order to obtain that information from them. We are looking at other sources of intelligence and information that we can get, including the plant’s CCTV footage itself, because the plant had CCTV. We will do a thorough and comprehensive job in terms of this investigation.

Angela Smith

Is the CCTV comprehensive? Is it all the way through the plant?

Jason Feeney

There is CCTV in the plant. What we are working on with the company is what access we have got and which cameras and coverage would relate to the particular incidents at that particular point on that particular day. We need to get to that level of detail in terms of accessing. We have got the footage that was published by ITV and the Guardian but they have not given us access to the rest of their intelligence and information.

Angela Smith

The CCTV is really important. If there is comprehensive coverage of the plant, we need some confidence—

Jason Feeney

That is what we are establishing as part of our investigation.

Angela Smith

We need to have confidence that you are determined to get the relevant coverage.

Chair

Do you have the power to be able to ask to see that CCTV coverage for the whole of the period?

Jason Feeney

Yes, in the same way we do in slaughterhouses.

Chair

Is the company co‑operating?

Jason Feeney

Yes.

Sandy Martin

Mr Feeney, you talked about the confidential hotline that was available to members of the public who could contact you. Can you tell us how many members of the public contacted you on that hotline and which led to prosecutions at all during the course of the last year?

Jason Feeney

We get about 100 to 130 calls a month on that, and it is a mix of information, as it often is on these reporting lines. There is a triage and filtering service that we go through. Certainly, I could say that the information we have received through that channel has led to investigations and intelligence capture by the Food Crime Unit, which we have then been able to pass on to enforcement agencies. The Food Crime Unit, as it stands at the minute, is just an intelligence unit, in line with Chris Elliott’s recommendations. We would like to move it to a second phase, where it has investigative powers of its own, where it can continue with those cases, and our board have said that that is what they would like to do, but it is subject to funding being available.

Sandy Martin

Do you accept that the majority of the population of this country—the vast majority, I would hazard to guess—and, I am sure, the overwhelming majority of people who work on the front line in food processing, have never heard of the Food Standards Agency?

Jason Feeney

No. I cannot remember the percentage of recognition but we do sample the profile of the organisation and how widely recognised it is. Certainly, we track a trust measure of how confident the public is in relation to the Food Standards Agency to do its job. Since we started measuring that six years ago, we are running at an all-time high. We are at 67%, which puts us high up in relation to other sectors, including the industry itself. The public do have confidence that we will do our job.

Sandy Martin

The point I am trying to make is that, if you believe, as members of the Committee think may be possible, that there is not a culture where frontline workers ignore the very sensible and careful hygienic policies of the company but rather do things that they have been told by their management to do, such as changing the labels—and I find it hard to understand why an ordinary employee would want to change the labels on anything unless they have been told to do so—you need to have some mechanism for enabling staff to contact you anonymously, with support. Are you at all proactive in talking to employees of food‑processing companies and trying to make sure that they are aware that, if they have misgivings about the way that the management of their company is being operated, they can contact you in confidence and know that they are not going to get sacked as a result?

Jason Feeney

Yes, and we have whistleblowing procedures in place, which will mean that we take steps to manage the anonymity and the protection of that individual, including non-disclosure of source of information. However, we can always do more.

Chair

You need to get that out, do you not, to the employees, that they would be protected? Otherwise, they do not feel they are.

Jason Feeney

Yes.

Sandy Martin

Indeed, and in most cases, I do not think most employees would believe you if you told them that they were protected. However, I have got a suggestion for you, because I heard a very distressed woman on the radio a couple of years ago who was sacked from Winterbourne View. I know this is not to do with animal welfare but she was sacked. She blew the whistle on what was going on at Winterbourne View, in great detail, to the CQC about six months before, and nothing was done about it. She was sacked. None of her friends ever talked to her again because they all lost their jobs when Winterbourne View was closed down. She has been unemployed ever since. She is in penury. The whole experience of whistleblowers in this country, on almost every area of society, is so appalling that I am not at all surprised that people are not willing to whistleblow. I believe that there is at least one whistleblower who lost their job working for 2 Sisters at some stage, probably during the 2014 investigations or the 2009 investigations into precisely the same sorts of things, neither of which were of sufficient—

Chair

Can we get to the question, Sandy?

Sandy Martin

Would you consider employing that whistleblower? It seems to me that somebody who has been in that situation and knows what is happening in that company and is aware of the sorts of mechanisms that are used to get round the Food Standards Agency and everybody else would be a great help to you.

Jason Feeney

As you say, people are, not without justification, nervous in terms of whistleblowing. What we would like to get to a position on would be the conversation I was having with Mr Brown earlier, which was having the culture within the company where people can raise issues and concerns early enough, so that they are addressed by the company and they do not need to get to the stage of whistleblowing. That would be a positive culture that you would have operating within more professional, more forward-thinking and more compliant companies.

Chair

Before I bring Paul in, you said the Food Crime Unit has not got investigatory powers. What on earth was it set up for if it did not have investigatory powers?

Jason Feeney

The Chris Elliott report recommended that the first stage of setting up a Food Crime Unit would be an intelligence unit, and that is what we have implemented. He then said that there should be an independent review at the two-year point. We had the Food Crime Unit reviewed independently by a panel led by a former chief constable. That panel and that review have recommended that we move to phase two and have investigatory powers. Our board has accepted that. We are now working with Ministers and with Treasury to see how we are going to make that happen.

Chair

That is something we will pursue on your behalf because that needs to happen.

Jason Feeney

That would be helpful.

Paul Flynn

Does the fact that a single journalist working under great difficulty, in secret, for a very short period—just 12 shifts—turned out so much material of about eight egregious breaches of food hygiene not convince you that these bad practices are endemic in this company?

Jason Feeney

They are serious allegations. We are establishing whether or not those allegations are substantiated.

Paul Flynn

Given the history and culture of the company, which you referred to, where this is not a new allegation—there have been at least two occasions in the past where they have been accused of the same practices—does it not strike you that this is the permanent situation and that they only behave well when you are inspecting them?

Jason Feeney

As part of the investigation, we met with the Chief Executive, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technical Director of the company last Thursday morning. Some of the areas we covered were, as you would expect, the specific allegations and the nature of the footage, and their explanation as to what was going on that could be seen on that footage. However, we also touched upon the culture of the organisation, the values and behaviours within that organisation. They have a new Chief Operating Officer who started six months ago, and they outlined to us, as I am sure they might do to you in the next session, the steps they were taking to make sure that the culture of the organisation reflected that.

Paul Flynn

They have given these assurances in the past to other people as far back as 2009. What is your explanation of the success of this company? They have taken over a great many other companies. Is the reason for their success that they are driving standards down by cutting corners?

Jason Feeney

That is a question you might direct at the company itself as to why it thinks it is successful. Certainly, from our point of view, we subject the company to the same level of inspection, and the same standards are expected of that company as—

Paul Flynn

The only way to ensure that these practices do end is to allow you or some other bodies the same freedom that the press have, under difficulties and legal problems, to put their own employees into the factory secretly, in the way that it is done, or to improve the surveillance by cameras.

Jason Feeney

Yes. There is a strong debate at the minute in relation to cameras and CCTV use in abattoirs and the mandation of that, which the Secretary of State for Defra has put forward. We, as an organisation, sought mandation and our board agreed that that would be the stance that we would take for compulsory CCTV in abattoirs last year, so we are pleased to see the Secretary of State and Defra responding to that.

Chair

Would that include cutting plants as well as slaughterhouses?

Jason Feeney

It is in abattoirs and slaughterhouses at the minute, particularly because of the handling of the live animals and the slaughter process itself, because of the complexity and the sensitivities around that, and to ensure that we have got the welfare standards that ought to be practised. You are dealing with live animals, so the risk is significantly greater, talking about the risk. We are supportive of CCTV as a management tool. We can seize the footage where there is an incident, but it is an enormously useful tool. I have seen this in plants that I have visited, where the management are looking at the behaviour and practices of their employees and seeing where there are additional training needs, either on an individual or a collective basis. Therefore, CCTV is a really important management tool, so that the management within the organisation can see what is happening on the front line.

David Simpson

Very briefly, Chairman, I will refer members to my expressions of interest in the agri-food sector. In relation to Jose’s point at the start about inspection, you have a team of inspectors within the Food Standards Agency. Within this particular plant, whether it be a cutting plant or a slaughter plant, are the inspectors who are there employed by the company or by the Government or by local government?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

They are employed by us. Meat inspectors who do unannounced inspections are employed directly by the Food Standards Agency.

David Simpson

The point I am making is, in Northern Ireland, we have the meat inspectors—and you will know this, Jason—in relation to slaughter and cutting. They are there full-time, not 24 hours a day but six days a week. Is that the case here? You are saying they are employed by you.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

That is in relation to the people doing unannounced inspections. I was thinking you were referring to Site D, which is the one which has been undercover. That is a cutting plant, not a slaughterhouse; therefore, we do not have a permanent presence there. Our inspection regime or our official-controls regime is based both on auditing, which is announced, and on unannounced inspections, where meat inspectors or vets can turn up unannounced at any time of the day and have a look at the premises. We are aware of the fact that, when we do an audit, there will be some preparedness for that. That is why we are trying to back this up with unannounced inspections that will take away that element.

Chair

When did you last have an unannounced inspection of plant D?

Jason Feeney

November last year.

Chair

November last year, so virtually a year ago.

Jason Feeney

Yes, There was an audit last July. There was an unannounced inspection in November. There was another audit this July.

David Simpson

I know time is running scarce but just to finish, in relation to the slaughter plants that have meat inspectors there during the working day, is it not an idea whereby cutting plants of a certain size would have to have meat inspectors there full-time, so that they are answerable either to you or to some other authority, so that they are in charge of what is going on there? It is the same in the slaughter plant. If there is an issue in a slaughter plant, as you well know, and there is a problem on the line, it is stopped. The meat inspector sees a problem and it is stopped. Is that not something that could be looked at to give more power to cutting plants?

Jason Feeney

You have got slaughterhouses and abattoirs where we have got permanent meat-inspector presence and permanent veterinary presence. We have cutting plants that are co-located with slaughterhouses, where we have got permanent veterinary presence and we have got meat-inspector presence on a permanent basis as well. Where we have standalone cutting plants like this, then we have the regime that Jose has described. There is an option for us where we have particular concerns about a particular plant. In response to this incident, we put a permanent presence on that plant from the Thursday for a period, to ensure that it was operating to a level and a standard that we were comfortable with. We have that option but whether you wanted to do that in generality—

Chair

They have been in but they are now gone again.

Jason Feeney

Yes, because the plant is not operating. It is being used as training. They are retraining and they are using it as a testing site.

Chair

When the plant starts again, because we want to get it back going and have full public confidence in it, are you going to have an inspector there?

Jason Feeney

Certainly, that is an option for us. We could do that.

Chair

That is not a yes or a no. “Certainly, that is an option”—that is a political answer. Yes or no—are you going to have an inspector in there or are you going to wait for another ITV and Guardian report before you take any action? What are you actually going to do?

Jason Feeney

Depending on what we find as a result of the investigation—we had a permanent presence there for two weeks. We stepped that out because the plant was not fully operational; in fact, it was being used for training purposes. We will look at whether or not we think a permanent presence is justified and necessary in relation to the risks that we find in response to what I would remind everybody are allegations at the minute. These are not proven; these are allegations. Is that option open to us? We will take that option. There is nothing stopping me doing that. For my own assurance, I think it is highly likely that we will.

Chair

That is probably as close to a yes as we are going to get.

David Simpson

In the industry, that is the weak link in the chain. We have it in the slaughter, at other plants and sizes. If we had that closed, we would overcome a lot of the problems we have seen.

Jason Feeney

It is possible.

Julian Sturdy

I just wanted to follow up on what David was saying on that. You have standalone processing plants, and processing plants that are co-located with abattoirs. You are inspecting both and you have permanent inspectors on the co-located sites. Historically, how many investigation cases do you have on the co-located sites compared to the standalone sites? What I am trying to say is: do you have evidence to say that standalone sites are less compliant?

Jason Feeney

The straight answer is I do not know. I could write to the Committee and see whether there is a difference.

Chair

Yes, please. That is a very good point, because it would then back up the fact that we had a permanent presence there.

Jason Feeney

Yes, and we have two different regimes in place.

Julian Sturdy

I realise that, but I wanted to know—

Jason Feeney

Yes, what the compare-and-contrast would be.

Julian Sturdy

Yes.

Mrs Murray

Can I just move it on a bit, because I am very aware that we are not very far down our whole agenda of information that we would like from you? You told the Chairman that your last unannounced inspection was in November of last year. Was that the last time you inspected this plant before the programme?

Jason Feeney

No, we audited it on 19 July. It underwent a full audit on 19 July this year.

Mrs Murray

What were your findings then?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

That is the answer to a question that was asked before. There were nine what we deemed minor non-compliances. They were, for example, related to the use of traceable labelling on trays, not necessarily in terms of fraudulent use of labelling but in terms of all labels not being taken out from circulation, which might account for that; I do not know. There were minor cleaning issues in a piece of equipment. There were issues to do, for example, with hazard analysis and critical control point documentation not being fully completed. There were issues that needed to be resolved. There were a wide range of issues that would apply to both documentation and operational practices, but none of which were deemed to be serious enough to justify what we call a major non-compliance.

Mrs Murray

Can I ask you about the labelling and traceability? I notice, when the Committee did their investigation into the horsemeat scandal, one of the answers that Lord Rooker gave was that you acknowledged that problems of food labelling had fallen through the gaps and were “not really for us”. Could you tell me: would it be you who was responsible for seeing these labels removed and a later-dated label put on? When you look at inspecting a plant, do you go back to look through the records, the sales notes and that sort of thing as well? I come from this because I used to have a fishing business where fish that my late husband caught had to have traceability straight from the catch to the consumer. Does the same sort of thing apply to this plant, and is it the Food Standards Agency that would have to ensure that that was adhered to?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

There are two aspects of traceability, and I will start clarifying that. Legislation in relation to traceability requires traceability one step back and one step forward. That means that, as far as the legislation is concerned, any food business operator needs to know who has supplied them with products and who they have supplied with their product.

Mrs Murray

And the dates, presumably.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

The dates go in parallel with that, yes. If there are food safety elements to that, yes, there would be labelling traceability there. In that case it would fall within the FSA remit.

Mrs Murray

Forgive me for interrupting but I just need to make sure I am absolutely clear on this. If you have a date that a supplier supplied the factory, and it showed when that happened, it would have accompanying paperwork.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

Yes.

Mrs Murray

And then, if you have a date where the processed goods were supplied to a retailer, you would have a clear date, then. If, for any reason, that label had been removed and reapplied, surely, if a retailer had returned goods, there should be accompanying paperwork for that as well, so there should be a clear audit trail. Who checks that?

Chair

Can I come in on that? There is 100,000 tonnes of fresh meat being processed today in that plant. An extra 5,000 tonnes come back from another source. Out of that plant will come 105,000 tonnes on that day. Is your audit as detailed to that? This is what we have got to drill down to. Your audit happened on 19 July. We heard that the filming went on in July. We are just not confident that your audit is doing the work that it needs to do. It almost proves that it is not, indeed.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

If you are asking me whether we go to the level of detail for every single consignment, the answer is no. We would spend years doing that. What we do is a sample exercise and we may—and this is what we normally do—ask for a traceability exercise.

Chair

So you have no idea of the amount of meat that goes through that plant and you cannot check whether the same amount of meat that went in that day went out that day. What happens to the meat that they do not process, which stays chilled overnight? Does that automatically go back into the processing plant the following day? I suggest that may be the case. You do not know, do you?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

If we look at that, yes, we will find that, but, as I said before, we look at a sample exercise. We will not look at every single day’s production. Even on the day we come, we may not look at all the production for the day and what happened the day before or the day after. We will look at a sample.

Chair

You will not pick up this type of abuse if you do not change your auditing system.

Mrs Murray

It is very clear.

Chair

That is absolutely as clear as the nose on your face.

Jason Feeney

We can undertake a sample of those transactions that have taken place and—

Mrs Murray

Sampling is not going to work if you do not—

Chair

Especially when you have had form on this, surely you would go out and say, “Into that plant, on a given day, 100,000 tonnes came in. 105,000 tonnes went out. Where did that other 5,000 tonnes come from?” These are big plants. This is a massive plant and very important to the poultry industry, the safety of the public and to farmers—very, very important—but it has to be right.

Jason Feeney

I agree with that.

Chair

You are not monitoring it, though, are you? You are not getting down to that. You have all these marvellous systems, have you not, with paperwork coming out of your ears? Yet you cannot get down to the basic fact of how much meat goes into that plant on a given day and how much meat comes out. Because that way, you can prove. If I stuck 100,000 tonnes of corn into a heap and took out 110,000 tonnes, I would have to know where the hell the other 10,000 tonnes came from.

Mrs Murray

I have to say to you that this applies with fresh fish already. In 2013, it was clear that food labelling had fallen through the gaps. What steps were taken in 2013 to make sure it does not fall through the gaps now?

Jason Feeney

It is absolutely clear that traceability is the responsibility of the FSA. As Jose said earlier in response to the question, companies are required to have clear information, including date and volumes, of one step back and one step forward.

Mrs Murray

Do you check it?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

Yes.

Jason Feeney

Jose said as well that, yes, we do check that on a sample but what we do not do, and what we cannot do for all the businesses, is check every single transaction that every single business does every day. That is not proportionate regulation.

Mrs Murray

I am really sorry but that is what does apply in the fishing industry.

Chair

What has happened here with this plant is that it is so massive that you cannot really audit it. That really is the crux of the matter. As long as that plant behaves in the right way, it is absolutely fine but, if it does not, you do not have the necessary capability of auditing it. You cannot audit, you are not auditing, and you do not seem to have a process of the total amount of meat that goes in on one given day and the total amount of meat that comes out the next day. That would start to show up immediately anomalies, and that is when you could come in with your investigation. If these spot checks are looking at various consignments and things, that does not work.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

It does not follow that taking 100,000 tonnes of meat into a plant will result in 100,000 tonnes of meat leaving the plant the following day.

Chair

No, but there should be an audit as to what happened to that 100,000 tonnes.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

That is what we look at. The auditing system looks at how the plant deals with that in terms of paperwork and in terms of documentation. That is what you have to rely on. You have to see what system the plant has for recording intake of product. How do we know what product has been recorded as coming into the premises? How do we know that the system the plant or the operator has follows this product through the process until it becomes a finished product that is going to be dispatched from the plant? That is what we look at, so that we can tie what comes into the plant with what is dispatched from the premises.

Chair

You can do that then.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

We can do that, yes, but it does not mean that we will do it—

Chair

Do you do it on a total consignment in a plant the size of 2 Sisters? It is about 200,000 tonnes at Site D. It is a lot of product and it takes a lot of following, and I suspect you do not follow it.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

Yes, which is why we do not do it, because it would take quite a long time. Just because of the complexity of it, it would take a long time.

Chair

One minute, you tell me you do it, and the next minute, you tell me you do not do it.

Jose Gomez-Luengo

I have told you that we do a sampling.

Chair

Which do you do?

Jason Feeney

It is clear. What Jose is saying is that we do that on a sampling basis to give us assurance that what we are seeing on the paperwork matches with what we are seeing in the plant. What Jose is making clear is we do not do that every single day to check out the balances for every single day since we last audited it a year or so earlier.

Chair

No, that is not the question I am asking.

Mrs Murray

Chairman, could I just ask, then: since this has been known and since that programme, have you looked at doing that so that you can ascertain whether this is a consistent problem or whether it has just started? Clearly, you know there is a problem now. You have seen the television programme. Have you decided to have a look at this, to conduct a proper audit, and have you done that?

Jose Gomez-Luengo

Yes, that is part of what we are looking at now.

Chair

I have some confidence that you might act on a lot of these findings. We would like to know the details of that in future. As I said to the panel, we are going to come back to this because we are really not satisfied with what is happening at the moment.

Angela Smith

Mr Feeney, you said earlier, in response to a question from my colleague, that it is not for you to answer a question about why the company is successful. They are the words you used: “It is not for me to say why the company is successful”. That was in relation to a question about driving down costs. Can you define to me what you think “successful” in this industry looks like?

Jason Feeney

From a Food Standards Agency point of view, successful is compliance with food safety and hygiene requirements and, in the broader industry, in terms of animal welfare requirements as well. What I was saying was it is not for me as a regulator to form a commercial judgment about why the business has been more successful than others, and others less successful.

Angela Smith

Surely it is the job of the Food Standards Agency. One cannot entirely divorce the decisions taken by a company about how it operates and the relationship of that with the costs incurred by the company from the standards that it maintains in relation to food safety and hygiene. Surely, it is impossible. Surely, the FSA understands that there could be a clear relationship between driving down costs and falling standards in relation to food safety.

Jason Feeney

There could be an issue where it increases the risk factor that it might generate non-compliance. If we felt that we were seeing non-compliance by a particular business being driven an excessive cost‑cutting culture, then that would be something we would tackle. We tackle non-compliance whatever the cause, whether the non-compliance is because it is ineffective management or whether it is driving down costs. We will tackle the non-compliance in terms of the enforcement regime we have.

Angela Smith

I would have thought there was a relationship between ineffective management and driving down costs, but what I am going to ask you is which tools you have to hand and which tools you deploy to assess that relationship between how a company runs itself—and you do rely heavily on inspecting management structures and management mechanisms—and food safety and hygiene. It would be good to know how you use these tools.

Jason Feeney

We get a strong feel for the business, as Jose was saying earlier, because we do not, in terms of our audits, simply go into the offices of the plant and examine the paperwork. We get out on the shop floor. We are observing what is happening in the interaction between the employees and the supervisors, between the managers and the staff. We are free to talk to staff and to talk to supervisors and managers within that plant. There are softer techniques that we can use that allow us to get a feel for whether or not the practices and the culture within the business are posing a risk to hygiene and safety requirements.

John Grogan

I will try to be as brief as possible. I was struck by something you said at the very beginning: that this was not regarded as a high-risk plant. I suppose the question is, “Why ever not?” Given that Jack Dromey, in 2009, said that he had been told that, often, the date on chicken meat was changed so that meat that should have been thrown away was sold to supermarkets. Many people had told him that, and that was not denied—so he said—by the company at the time then, in 2014. Should this have not been on the watch list and at the high-risk end of it, and should you not have had someone in there as a result of that? Why was it not high risk?

Jason Feeney

That is because of the result of the audit and the inspections that we had undertaken at that plant and what we had found and established. As Jose detailed in relation to the last audit, we had found a number of minor non-compliances, and that would generate a certain assessment about the risk attached to that business and that particular plant. Because of the findings of those inspections and audits, it was not one of those that was giving us serious cause for concern at that time.

John Grogan

However, there was all this evidence building up that there was a cause for concern, and the public now will hear that you put in a permanent presence at one site, as I understand it. There are 12 sites, are there not, that the company has? Presumably, you would put in a permanent presence at all of them because, unlike the site in question, they are all at full production at the moment.

Jason Feeney

Yes, they are.

John Grogan

Is there a permanent presence in there and, if not, why not?

Jason Feeney

There is not, and the reason why not is that, again, as a result of the inspections and audit we do and the investigation that we are currently undertaking, if it gave us cause for concern that any of those other plants were at risk and/or seriously non-compliant, then we have the option of putting a permanent presence in.

John Grogan

Respectfully, however, the inadequacy of those investigations that you have undertaken has been demonstrated by this. Just to give public confidence, I would urge you to reconsider that. Moving quickly on, however, because I know we are short of time, you referred to the fact that you met the company on Thursday last week—the Managing Director. You have given some public comment before then on the progress of the investigation. You said that you had found no threats to public health but matters requiring management attention had been identified. Presumably, you are not ruling out anything at this stage, including prosecution. Was it discussed with you at the plant that they were going to sack the person who was identified in the film as changing the labels and so on? Was that mentioned? Presumably, that makes it a very serious matter indeed.

Jason Feeney

You will understand why I am cautious about revealing too much about the investigation and what its findings—

John Grogan

You were talking about the investigation a few weeks ago, saying it was only management attention that was required.

Jason Feeney

We have extended that investigation and we have a range of enforcement options, up to and including prosecution. I do not want to jeopardise any action we might take by inadvertently providing reasons as to why any serious action might not be successful, so I have to be cautious about what I say in relation to the breadth of the investigation, but yes, we did discuss that last Thursday.

John Grogan

However, given that this guy has been sacked, can you confirm that the company has now accepted that there was a serious breach of regulations?

Jason Feeney

The evidence from the company is part of the investigation. I know, in the next session, you are going to be speaking to the same people we were speaking to.

John Grogan

Sure, but just finally, would you revise your remarks or the remarks attributed to the Food Standards Agency a few weeks ago that it was only matters requiring management attention, and that there is a possibility that it is a little more than management attention? That perhaps was an unwise remark at the early stage of the investigation.

Jason Feeney

It would have been better to have said that this is an ongoing investigation and we will get to the bottom of what has happened, and then we will take the appropriate enforcement action, depending on what we find.

Sandy Martin

Are you going to be interviewing the person who was sacked?

Jason Feeney

Yes, we can do that as part of the investigation. We will do that but we have not lined up the appointment, as it were, yet.

Chair

Caroline, I want to bring you in, because I want to also bring in the meat inspection and local authority and Environmental Health and what-have-you. I notice you have been let off the hook, so to speak, so far, so we want to put you back on the hook now, so, over to you, Caroline.

Dr Johnson

I did have a question for the FSA first of all. You say you are not going to put anything in in terms of the other plants, in terms of a permanent presence, and in response to a previous question, because you have no concerns about the other plants. However, there is a news report from 2013 that suggests that the company was fined for three food safety offences at Ipswich Crown Court in relation to their plant at Stowmarket. A year later, in 2014, there was an exposé in the news about their food safety at a different plant, and now this is a third plant that is involved from the same company in alleged malpractice in terms of food safety. Does that not suggest to you that the problem is wider than just the one plant and that you need to look at all of them in the same level of detail?

Jason Feeney

Yes, and that is why we have extended the investigation. We have visited all the plants. We are subjecting those plants to an increased level of scrutiny. That does not necessarily mean we have to have a permanent presence; it depends on what the value of the permanent presence would be. I would say that we will take account of the record and the track record of the company, but obviously we will place greater weight on the evidence that is most recent.

Dr Johnson

The other question that I had was related to all four of you. On the FSA website, you make the point that one of the reasons why you do the poultry checking is that it is to prevent Campylobacter, which, on your own estimates on your own website, costs the UK economy around £900 million a year and is responsible for over 100 deaths. You say that 80% of Campylobacter comes from contaminated poultry. I notice that, prior to March 2016, there are quite a lot of data on your website about how you have been monitoring the chicken to see what proportion of the chicken contained Campylobacter when sampled. To what extent do you still look at that, because those data are over 18 months old? It was being reported three-monthly but it does not look to be anymore. To what extent do you look at those data as a marker of food safety within an organisation, and how often do you monitor the 2 Sisters plant for that?

Jason Feeney

We have a regular sampling programme that we undertake with all the major retailers, which is where the focus of our energies has been in relation to Campylobacter over the last three years. We have seen significant improvements in terms of the highest rates of infection dropping now down to the 6-7% range, when it was well into the 15-20% range.

Dr Johnson

On your website, you suggest that is because you monitor it in a different way now, and that the twenty-something percent figure was related to measuring the amount of neck skin and that you now remove that, so that would improve your rate. However, since Campylobacter requires such a very low infective dose in order to cause ill health in a person, the fact that you have a small amount actually is not that relevant.

Jason Feeney

We have refined the way that we measure it to try to make it more accurate. Your question was about whether we publish that on a regular basis. We are publishing that and have been publishing that quarterly. I think I am right in saying we published the last set of numbers last week or the week before. We are moving to a position where we have agreement with the retailers that they will publish the information to our standards and our protocols. That is a really good step forward in terms of the industry being more open and transparent about its own numbers and its own figures.

Dr Johnson

What I saw on your website about Campylobacter is 18 months behind.

Jason Feeney

I will check that because, within the last two weeks, we have published the latest set of samples.

Chair

If I can interrupt, your Chief Executive yesterday said that the amount of Campylobacter dropped from over 20% down to 6%, so you must have those figures.

Jason Feeney

Yes, and we publish them on a regular basis.

Chair

They are outdated; you say they are not.

Dr Johnson

They have changed the way they—

Chair

That was the point that she made.

Jason Feeney

I will check on the website to make sure, because we do publish it and it attracts a lot of press attention in media where we do it, and we did it within the last fortnight. What I would say is that 2 Sisters, as a company, have been at the forefront of working with us to tackle Campylobacter. They have been one of the most co-operative and one of the most ground-breaking companies in terms of trying to reduce a lot of the Campylobacter in the industry, and working with the retailers that they supply

Chair

We will remember that as a brownie point in a minute. I am conscious that Mr Britton and Mr Charnley have not said anything yet, and we have to move on to their relationships with 2 Sisters and how they co-operate with the FSA, etc.

Dr Johnson

The opening question, I guess, is: what is your role in monitoring the 2 Sisters plant?

Jan Britton

Our role is around food standards. Essentially, we are responsible—we are the competent authority for ensuring that food is labelled correctly. While traceability is an FSA responsibility, it is our responsibility to make sure that, when food is labelled, it complies with both the general requirements that all food has to be labelled with, and any specific requirements that relate to a particular product, and that any claims made about the food are, in fact, true.

Chair

The date?

Jan Britton

The date.

Dr Johnson

When we see these videos on the television, suggesting that labels have been changed and dates have been removed and altered, does that represent a failure of your processes to detect that?

Jan Britton

Yes.

Dr Johnson

What are you doing to make sure that you do not fail to detect that, should it happen in the future?

Jan Britton

Many of the comments that have already been made about the process the FSA follows equally apply to the process not just that Sandwell Council follows but any—

Chair

Are you inspecting?

Jan Britton

Yes, that is right. We follow a risk-based inspection methodology that looks at compliance with process.

Chair

But the same question as Caroline: you did not find it, did you?

Jan Britton

Indeed, that is right, and one of the questions we, in relation to our specific responsibilities in Sandwell, will be asking is: how do we learn from that and move forward in a way that tells us something different? We have known 2 Sisters. One of the advantages of the local authority being involved in this sort of work is that, unlike the FSA, with 600,000 food business, we know these companies on our local patch. We have had longstanding working relations with them, and I would have said that our strength was knowing the culture. I would have said our strength was knowing these companies over prolonged periods of time at the local level. What this evidence that has come through from the media inquiry shows, or at least suggests to me, is that perhaps we did not know this company as well as we thought we did, and we have to ask ourselves, as we go forward, what we are going to do differently. The regime that we follow is nationally prescribed. We follow a national framework with a national risk assessment methodology and we comply with that methodology.

Chair

When were you last in the plant?

Jan Britton

We were last in that plant in—

Bob Charnley

March this year, 2017.

Chair

You consider that often enough to be in there, do you?

Jan Britton

We have been back since the news broke.

Chair

I am not particularly interested in that because you would have gone back there, would you not, once it is all over the media?

Jan Britton

Yes.

Chair

What we are trying to drill down on is: why did the media find out and why did you not?

Jan Britton

Yes, I understand that. The question we are also asking ourselves is whether the frequency with which we visited that company is going to be sufficient in the future.

Chair

You say also you know the company, which is an interesting statement to make. You know the company, you know the history and you know there have been some previous problems, so why do you not keep a really strong eye on what is happening?

Jan Britton

We followed that national framework and complied with all of its requirements in respect of this company. We knew of some of the history. We did not know all of what might now be evident.

Chair

You offered the evidence that you knew the company, so do not try to walk away from that. You knew the company. You know the history. You have certain rules that you have to follow but also, surely, the whole argument of this risk-based business is that you take action if you think there is a problem. If you knew the company, you did not know the company well enough, did you?

Jan Britton

I agree.

Chair

Why did you not take that action?

Jan Britton

You have already said that the evidence that is now available to us in the media report demonstrates we did not know that company well enough to take more action than we were doing. The council’s record is one of compliance with the national scheme. The question whether that compliance is sufficient in the light of what we know is a valid one and one we are asking.

Chair

You are reviewing your processes and your procedures and you are likely to change them dramatically. Am I leading you as a witness?

Jan Britton

You are leading me but you are saying what I would have said anyway.

Angela Smith

Can I just ask on that: will you be reviewing the national scheme itself from your own perspective as to whether or not that is adequate?

Jan Britton

We, as an individual local authority, do not own the national scheme but we certainly have the right to put evidence forward for the owners of the scheme to consider. In context, at the moment in Sandwell, we have 13 plants or 13 locations that we consider to be at the highest level of risk in terms of our relatively narrow food standard labelling responsibilities. We will be looking particularly at those plants: what we do, the frequency with which we inspect, and the manner in which we inspect. The comments about the time that it takes to get in and the pre-warning that is given are all valid comments. Again, to my point about being local and being the council with 13 or 14 such plants on our patch, we do not have to have quite the regard that the FSA do to the scale of the whole sector, so our ability to fine-tune what we do to particular circumstances is greater. I will certainly be looking to exercise that ability to do something locally that meets local needs.

Dr Johnson

I have two more questions. Were you aware of CCTV that has been suggested is at this plant, and has it been reviewed by your council?

Chair

Do you look at it?

Jan Britton

We are aware that there is CCTV and we were aware that the Food Standards Agency were reviewing it. We have not in the past routinely looked at CCTV.

Dr Johnson

Do you think it would be beneficial for not just abattoirs but for food processing plants to have mandatory CCTV?

Jan Britton

In the generality of my experience as a council chief executive, having eyes on something is a fair way of making sure that rules are followed and regulations are complied with, so I would say that would seem a very sensible avenue to pursue.

Dr Johnson

Thank you. My final question is about the penalties. When you want to modify someone’s behaviour and they are not doing what you want them to do, you have options of carrots and sticks, do you not? The BBC report that I referred to earlier about a fine imposed on this company in 2013 suggested that they had been fined £112,500 for food standard offences. When there was the exposé or investigation into chicken potentially dropped on the floor in Scunthorpe in 2014, the FSA initially said there was no proof that it had gone into the food chain, but later said it was a regulation breach but there was no fine. What is the maximum penalty that you are able to impose for such breaches? Do you think it is a) adequate, and b) actually imposed and enforced properly?

Jason Feeney

I would say we have seen an upward drift in terms of the penalties being applied by the courts. Recently, we have had a few six-figure fines as a result of prosecutions that we have taken, both in the hygiene space and also in the animal welfare space as well, which is an area that we have been paying more focus and more attention to over these last two years. We are seeing the courts taking these offences more seriously. Food business operators have been sentenced to custodial sentences, so we have had people sent to prison. We have had restaurant owners prosecuted by local authorities, particularly in relation to allergen breaches that have led to, in one or two cases, manslaughter charges and deaths. The strongest I have seen in my time here is somebody getting sentenced to eight years in prison.

John Grogan

I do not think it has been touched on for a little while but, in 2013, this Committee concluded there was a “lack of clarity about where food safety responsibility lies” and “this has weakened the UK’s ability to identify and respond to food standards concerns.” Do you think there has been considerable progress? That is to both the council and then the FSA.

Jan Britton

We feel that we have a good working relationship with the FSA. We have no complaints about that working relationship. I have asked the questions that you would expect me to ask about data-sharing and ongoing work and relationships between our two organisations, and I have had nothing but assurances they are strong and continuing. They are not an immediate response to this problem. They are a consistent and longstanding feature of our work. That does not mean there cannot be improvements and, no doubt, that will be one of the things that we consider. My personal view and my professional view is that there is a balance between a national regulator with national overview and the role of a local authority on the patch—notwithstanding the comments about the case, I do know this area, and my councillors know the area; we understand not just the regulatory regime for this company but we know how many people they employ; we know where people live; we have a relationship which is different to that which a national body could have. That builds a strength in the system that a single national agency might not be able to bring. I am not saying that that strength worked totally well in this instance—I acknowledge that is a weakness—but that balance between a national regulator and a local authority strikes me as being a powerful force for good things, if harnessed well.

Jason Feeney

I would fully agree. We have made great strides in terms of the relationship. It is very clear about what the local authority’s responsibilities are and what ours are. We have just heard an illustration of that. We are responsible for traceability; the local authority is responsible for labelling and best-before dates and use-by dates in terms of trading standards. It is very clear about who is responsible, and I could not agree more on the balance between a national oversight of the industry and the local knowledge on the ground and the flexibility that was referred to earlier. That gives the regime the best that we can do in terms of balancing the responsibilities. However, there will always be cases where it has been difficult.

Sandy Martin

Over and over again, some of these abuses in companies have been discovered by undercover operations by television companies and by newspapers. Do you not think that it is time for the FSA to start using some of these sorts of undercover operations in the same sort of way? It is not good for the confidence that this country has in the Food Standards Agency that we normally expect the most egregious things to be discovered by the newspapers or by television stations rather than by the Food Standards Agency.

Chair

I would include not only the FSA but the local authority as well in this, because you have to work together and you have to work together more, dare I say it, than you are at the moment. How do you get this in there and how do you get people working undercover?

Jason Feeney

We talked about this earlier. There is more we can do in terms of providing awareness and access, so that we can get information and intelligence from those who are already employed in a company. Never say never but it would be a significant step to place undercover employees into particular businesses. We would need to weigh that up carefully in terms of what the ramifications of that were, but I would not say never.

Jan Britton

A lot rests in the conversation about culture and the comments that have already been made about whistleblowing. The council, on its webpages, offers the opportunity for confidential whistleblowing relating to trading standards issues, but I do completely take the point that was made earlier about the confidence with which people take up such offers, and there is an avenue there that we would readily explore. I am minded to think about Crimestoppers, which is a route to pass confidential information to the police via an external agency, for example, to give a greater confidence to people, and there might be things we can explore in that area that help.

Chair

That is good because we have got to find a better system where people feel comfortable that they can come forward and they are not going to be pressurised, not just by 2 Sisters but by any other company, because I suspect there is a lot of pressure on the workforce in this industry, across the piece. It is a bit like the Volkswagen scandal over engines: it was not just Volkswagen in the end, was it? That is what we have got to be conscious of. This needs to be a test case on how we can deal with the situation better.

Julian Sturdy

The Food Standards Agency audits local-authority performance in ensuring food standards. When was Sandwell Council last audited by the FSA?

Jason Feeney

We capture performance information in relation to food inspection on a regular basis and we publish that annually in terms of relative performance between local authorities. I have not got the specific date of when we audited this particular council but we do get that performance information and publish it on a regular basis.

Julian Sturdy

Carrying on from that, the Food Standards Agency can provide funding to local authorities to assist in maintaining food safety. Have you given any money or funds to Sandwell Council or have they received any in this financial year?

Jason Feeney

No, not that I am aware of.

Julian Sturdy

Do you do that to other local authorities?

Jason Feeney

We provide funding for training support. That is largely what we provide it for, so that they can access training. However, the funding—you will be more expert at this than I—

Chair

Sorry to interrupt you but is the crime unit that you set up not supposed to do precisely that—help with whistleblowers being able to come forward?

Jason Feeney

Sorry, we are on local authority funding.

Chair

Sorry, that was me.

Jason Feeney

That is a different thing.

Chair

Finish that and then I will come back.

Jason Feeney

On local authority funding, it will be in the grant, will it not? It is the mainstream funding for the officers.

Jan Britton

We have not received any specific grant funding from the FSA in recent years. In my tenure as Chief Executive, we have not been specifically audited by the FSA either.

Julian Sturdy

Have you ever received any grant funding from the FSA?

Bob Charnley

No, we have not, but the FSA do run an annual food sampling programme, which, as a region, in the West Midlands, we bid into, so we receive funding from that to take so many samples, targeted at the priorities that the Food Standards Agency has set.

Julian Sturdy

Mr Feeney, how long have you been with the Food Standards Agency?

Jason Feeney

I have been the Chief Executive since April this year. Before that, I was Chief Operating Officer for two years.

Julian Sturdy

I was thinking more over a 10-year period, but you might be able to answer this. Over that period, have you seen or has it come to light that commercial pressures coming down the supply chain are starting to override safety? What I am saying is: are we seeing more of these incidents arise than, say, 10 years ago because of that?

Jason Feeney

As the Chair was saying, there is always pressure within the industry about margins and there is always that risk, as we were talking about earlier, that that leads to a potential for food safety and hygiene risks. I would not say that that was a greater risk now than it was, certainly from the two or three years I have been here. I would not say that there is a noticeable escalation of that.

Julian Sturdy

How about Trading Standards? Have you seen anything over your time that would say that the commercial pressures coming down the supply chain have meant that we are seeing more of these incidents arise? I am not saying in 2 Sisters but anywhere.

Jan Britton

I could not point to anything that I would describe as clear evidence of that being the case. However, knowing food businesses locally, the last 10 years have been a very difficult time. It seems to me that the good ones have more often survived than the bad, and that might perhaps run counter to some of what you are saying, but I could not offer that as knowledged evidence that I could give you detail on, I am afraid.

Alan Brown

In terms of commercial pressures or financial pressures on the regulatory side, what has the impact been, first of all, on Food Standards Agency budgets over the past few years? Clearly, councils have had cuts. How is that managed?

Jan Britton

We have been required to reduce our revenue budget as a local authority by about £170 million a year, but this is a high-priority regulatory role where we have a statutory obligation to meet the expectations, so this is an area that has not been reduced or cut as a result of budget reductions. It is a duty that we have to comply with and we do so. As we go forward, if we determine that a different approach or an enhanced approach is required, then, knowing Sandwell Council as I do, we will resource that appropriately.

Jason Feeney

I will be as quick as I can. In the last Spending Review, we got a flat-line settlement, so it is a real-terms cut, depending on how you go with inflation, of probably between 5% and 10%. We have received additional funding for our work on EU exit in this financial year.

Chair

Gentlemen, thank you very much. It has been a good session. We all want much better inspection and much tighter inspection. There is a need for whistleblowers to be able to freely come forward. The point that David Simpson made was very valid, about the fact that, perhaps in these large cutting plants, we may well need a full-time meat inspector. That is something that perhaps FSA and local authority should look at, because we have to try to make sure that confidence is brought back to the consumer, so that the very successful poultry industry and farming industry can be maintained. It is in all of our interests—both consumer and producer—that this does not happen again, so thank you very much for the evidence.

Witnesses

Ranjit Singh Boparan, Chief Executive, 2 Sisters Food Group, and Chris Gilbert-Wood, Technical Director, 2 Sisters Food Group, gave evidence.

Chair

Thank you for coming to our inquiry. Can you, first of all, starting with Mr Chris Gilbert-Wood, introduce yourself, and then, please, Mr Ranjit Singh Boparan.

Ranjit Singh Boparan

I am Ranjit Singh Boparan. Here with me is Chris Gilbert-Wood, my Group Technical Director.

Chair

Please give me just a little more detail. Naturally, you are very much 2 Sisters. Are you a Director or Managing Director?

Ranjit Singh Boparan

I am the Chief Executive Officer of 2 Sisters Food Group.

Chris Gilbert-Wood

I am the Group Technical Director for the 2 Sisters Food Group.

Chair

First of all, when were you first made aware of the allegations of malpractice at your Site D plant at West Bromwich? When did you first know that there was a problem?

Chris Gilbert-Wood

We were contacted on Sunday 24 September.

Chair

You were not aware that these problems that were shown up on camera were happening in your plant.

Ranjit Singh Boparan

Absolutely not aware. We were not aware. The first we heard was from the Guardian at 12.30 on 24 September. That is when we started our incident team.

Chair

Do you accept that these allegations are accurate and that they represent the practice that went on in your plant, even though you say you were not aware of the situation?

Ranjit Singh Boparan

Chair, we were very disappointed and upset when we saw the footage for the first time, which was aired by ITN. We absolutely apologise for the doubt this has caused to our customers, consumers and employees. We want to reassure you we do treat food safety at the highest of our standards. We are continuously committed to improving food safety every day.

Chair

Mr Boparan, as you can tell from probably listening all day, I am quite a straightforward man. Not only are you a big business but you have huge investments yourself in the poultry industry. You have huge farms down in my constituency. I have many farmers in the constituency who produce very good-quality chicken. When you have a problem like this that closes down that particular cutting plant, it has a huge economic effect on the farmers but also on you. The question—and I am being quite straightforward with you—is that perhaps something like this is not only not in the interests of the consumer because they cannot have complete confidence in poultry, but surely it is not in your financial interests either to have a situation like this.

Ranjit Singh Boparan

Chair, it is not in anyone’s interest to have a situation like this. The whole supply chain suffers. The confidence does get knocked. We have gone through the four allegations and we would like to explain them. The first allegation is the product on the floor. That absolutely should not have happened. Nobody should ever pick up product off the floor. We have 30 tonnes of product a week that we dispose of for product being on the floor.

Chair

From your total plants or that plant?

Ranjit Singh Boparan

The total plants. That plant is no different to any other plant in scale of floor waste. We train our staff when they join us. There is a four-hour induction programme. They are retrained every three years. There are signs up across the whole factory: “Do not pick up product off the floor”. There are 400 hygiene people in these factories who wear orange overalls. They are the only people who can pick product off the floor, but still somebody picked product off the floor. Someone has made a mistake. We have to apologise for that and I have to take responsibility for that. What are we doing about it? That is more important.

Chair

Yes, that is much more important.

Ranjit Singh Boparan

What we are doing about it is we are not doing the training that we were doing for four hours anymore. We are going to do eight-hour training, not every three years but every year. We are going to have a theme every single month to go through a process. Whether it is floor policy, traceability or labelling, that is what we are going to do. We are going to put a mystery worker going into factories who can see these things happening. We are doing a number of other things that we will share with you. We have to say that went wrong and it is a mistake, and we will continue to do things so that we do not have these mistakes. We then move on to the labelling. When you look at the labelling, you saw the individual change a label from the 15th to the 16th. Naturally, this is a cutting plant; it is not a slaughterhouse. When you change a label from the 15th to the 16th, it is naturally the next day. I will tell you what the problem is first and then I will tell you what we have done about it. First of all, I have to say that it does not look right from a consumer point of view. When I looked at that footage, it just did not look right. However, the individual there in question was removing a label and putting another label on. The 15th production had finished and, when you cut chicken in a cutting factory, what happens is one chicken becomes 14 pieces. Not every customer buys in balance, so you are removing drumsticks and putting them into crates for when the next production could go on, or it could go up for the freezer. We have to keep the date on for the traceability. The individual who was putting the 16th labels on, from my point of view, when we looked at it, as the 15th finished and the 16th started, he was giving labels for the 16th because that was the correct product label for what was in the crate. If he had left the 15th on, that was incorrect.