Parliamentary committee says no concrete steps have been taken to improve food inspection regime despite inquiry

The government has failed to take “definite action” following a parliamentary inquiry last year into food standards at the country’s largest supplier of supermarket chicken, a committee of MPs has said.

The environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee is pressing Whitehall to implement specific recommendations to improve the wider food standards inspection regime, after a Guardian and ITV undercover investigation prompted 2 Sisters Food Group to temporarily shut its West Bromwich site last October.

In a letter to Steve Brine, the parliamentary undersecretary of state for public health, committee chairman Neil Parish wrote: “We are disappointed with the lack of definite action taken by the FSA [Food Standards Agency] and wider government to date. We trust that the further response we receive by 17 February will be more thorough in setting out the concrete steps the government will be taking.”

While Parish welcomed moves to require CCTV monitoring of meat cutting plants, he is still pushing for confirmation that the Treasury will approve funding for the National Food Crime Unit, and that the FSA will “receive all data gathered by retailers and accreditation bodies so that a single, unified picture of standards and hygiene practices in food processing plants can be drawn and failings better identified”.

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The committee’s inquiry was launched as a direct response to the Guardian and ITV undercover West Bromwich footage that showed chicken being dropped on the floor and returned to the production line, and an instance of labels recording the slaughter dates of poultry being changed.

The chicken processor has denied the footage at that factory showed any food safety breaches and said it temporarily suspended production in West Bromwich three days later because of process failures, adding that its “internal investigation has shown some isolated instances of non-compliance with our own quality management systems”.

In December, leaked documents showed how Tesco food standards inspectors had unearthed a series of “major” process issues at a second 2 Sisters Food Group factory, on the same weekend that separate concerns prompted the West Bromwich closure.

The supermarket’s auditors gave the 2 Sisters chicken plant in Scotland what they described as a “red” warning rating, after identifying process failures that the retailer “insisted … were addressed immediately to prevent any food safety issues”.

Fewer than 1% of Tesco supplier sites receive a “red” audit rating, the worst score in the supermarket’s internal colour-coded safety and quality compliance system. The supermarket did not pass its full report to the FSA until being contacted by the Guardian and ITV.

In December, 2 Sisters Food Group said that the October factory inspection in Scotland did not show “any risk to food safety … This is using old news to highlight issues which were resolved with our customer two months ago.”