This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The Food Standards Agency has withdrawn the emergency measures imposed on 2 Sisters Food Group after six months of the regulator’s inspectors working full time inside the poultry cutting plants of the UK’s largest supplier of supermarket chicken.

The move was announced in a second update by the FSA to parliament’s environment, food and rural affairs select committee, which launched an inquiry into the company last year following a food standards scandal at the firm.

The parliamentary inquiry was called as a direct result of an undercover investigation by the Guardian and ITV, which filmed an instance of workers at a 2 Sisters cutting plant in West Bromwich changing the slaughter dates of batches of chickens.

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The footage also showed workers dropping chickens on the floor of the processing plant and returning them to the production line.

In a letter to the committee, the FSA’s chief executive, Jason Feeney, said: “We are confident the emergency measures of full-time presence in all 2SFG standalone poultry cutting plants is no longer required. On this basis cutting plant supervision stopped at the end of April and we have moved to unannounced inspections in all the cutting plants on a regular basis.”

The report added that 2 Sisters’ upgrading of CCTV cameras inside its cutting plants would be completed this month and that the “FSA will have remote access to the system so the agency can monitor activity remotely”.

FSA inspectors moved into the West Bromwich plant in September, days before production at the facility was temporarily suspended as supermarkets boycotted the site. The regulator subsequently widened its investigation to include all of 2 Sisters cutting plants.

In its first report to the select committee in March, the FSA concluded that 2 Sisters was guilty of regulatory failures and poor hygiene at its poultry plants.

It also said: “No justification for this incident of label changes could be established.”

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The food group, which produces a third of all poultry products eaten in the UK, had previously claimed that there had been no regulatory breaches at the plant and that there was an innocent explanation for changing the date labels.

On Monday 2 Sisters said it welcomed the committee’s second report and that it was pleased it highlighted “areas of progress”, including the company publishing audits conducted at its sites, enhanced training of staff and the upgrading of its CCTV system.