Asda has been hit with a £130,000 fine for selling out-of-date food. Environmental health inspectors from Knowsley Council found 59 food items on sale after use by dates had expired on the shelves at an Asda superstore in Huyton, Merseyside, on two days between February and March last year.
The supermarket giant pleaded guilty to six breaches of food safety regulations at Liverpool and Knowsley Magistrates’ Court on Thursday (September 25). Knowsley Council said it had warned Asda it needed to improve its checks on use by dates, but despite the warnings its inspectors still found food on shelves which shouldn’t have been.
This included 26 packs of ham, 10 packets of cheesecake, eight cartons of crème fraiche, four packs of smoky BBQ tasty bites, vegan no chorizo slices and two packets of smoked salmon.
They also found two chicken and bacon bakes, a toffee sundae, a pack of corned beef and Nduja and Regato Cheese Pinwheels which were still on sale 18 days after the use by date had expired.
Asda was fined £130,000 and ordered to pay £11,000 in costs to the council, according to the local authority.
Knowsley said its legal action came after Asda received hefty fines from similar prosecutions brought by councils in Derby and Cornwall for selling food which had expired use by dates.
A solicitor acting for for Knowsley Council told the hearing that the defence had said it was just a localised failure but the local authority argued there was “a fundamental flaw” in its system.
They alleged the system was vulnerable and would not be classed as industry standard, adding: “Items in the ‘food to go’ range did not fall within the date checking system. The system for that was a manual check.
“There was no record kept of those checks for items that were out of date to then be disposed of and then dealt with.”
The solicitor said the prosecution maintained that there was no industry standard procedure in place, according to The Sun.
Asda’s barrister, Iain MacDonald, is reported by the same publication as saying his client wished to make clear it wasn’t acceptable for the food to be on sale.
He said it was contrary to Asda’s commitment to providing safe food for customers and represented a failure at the store.
Mr MacDonald is reported to have told the court that it was dealing with two occasions where the vast majority were just one or two days past the use by date in a store with more than 6,000 fresh product lines.
He said any defects which may have been in the system do not apply now, adding: “There is a suggestion there was not a sufficient response, warnings or instructions being ignored between engagement with the officers of the council and the store management.
The barrister said it wasn’t accepted that there was any refusal to engage and no ignoring of warnings. He said: “The company took appropriate action by dismissing those who were not working appropriately.”
Shelley Powell, Cabinet Member for Communities and Neighbourhoods at Knowsley, said: “It’s really important that retailers adhere to the law and ensure consumers aren’t put at any risk due to items being available to buy when the use by date has already expired.
“We will continue to routinely check food businesses to ensure there are no food breaches and take robust action against anyone who is not complying with the law.”
An Asda spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that some out out-of-date products were found on sale at our Huyton store last year. This fell short of the standards our customers rightly expect and that we hold ourselves to.
“Since then, we have introduced a new date code checking process in every Asda store to ensure the freshest products are always available for customers to buy.”
The company reiterated that the prosecution related to food safety breaches which took place last year when a different date code checking process was in use.
It said the updated process introduced in November last year involves daily manual checks on all short-life products and twice-weekly checks on every-long life product.
