Asda Stores Ltd has been handed a £250,000 fine for displaying food beyond its use-by date, following an investigation by Derby City Council’s Trading Standards Team.
The case was heard at Southern Derbyshire Magistrates Court, where, on Wednesday 16 October, District Judge Jonathan Taaffe found Asda Stores Ltd guilty of 11 offences. These related to having unsafe food on offer for sale contrary to regulation 19 of the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013.
Asda Stores Ltd were then handed down a fine of £250,000 and ordered to pay costs of £74,117.69 and a victim surcharge of £190.
This sizeable fine comes after an inspection at Asda’s Sinfin store on 15 July 2021. During the inspection, Trading Standards officers found 18 food items on shelves past their use-by date. This followed previous warnings on two occasions from Senior Trading Standards Officers.
Use-by dates are applied to highly perishable food items by the manufacturer and are crucial to ensuring customers are buying and consuming safe items. According to the Food Standards Agency, these dates are the most important to remember for food products. Shoppers are advised never to eat food beyond the use-by date, even if it looks and smells ok.
District Judge Taaffe determined that Asda Stores Ltd did not provide a satisfactory defence, but instead failed to prove that they had implemented their system properly and failed to show that they had made improvements following the warnings received from the Trading Standards team.
Councillor Shiraz Khan, Cabinet Member for Housing and Regulatory Services, said:
A fine of this scale reflects the seriousness of the situation and the risk it posed to the people of Derby.
“We are lucky that we have a Trading Standards team who are committed to keeping our city safe, and I am incredibly proud of the work that they continue to do. This case serves as a reminder that we are prepared to take whatever action necessary against businesses that break the rules, no matter how big or small.
The investigation was led by Victoria Rose, Senior Trading Standards Officer, who said:
Customers should be able to rely on stores such as Asda to supply food that is safe to eat. It’s my role as a Senior Trading Standards Officer to help protect the public when this is not the case, especially when some of these foods were aimed at children and found to be on the shelves six months past their use-by date.
Donna Dowse, Trading Standards Service Manager, added:
This was not an easy case to bring before the courts, and as a service we faced many barriers put before us due to the nature of Primary Authority Partnerships when trying to take enforcement action.
The Primary Authority blocked our enforcement action in this case. As such, Victoria Rose had to take the matter first to the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) and then to the Secretary of State before we could look at a prosecution. If it wasn’t for this commitment to keeping the public safe, then Asda would not have been held accountable for their failings as they have been today.
A Primary Authority Partnership is an agreement in law between a business and a local authority. If the local authority provides that business with “assured” advice, then the business can rely on that advice when being investigated by other local authorities, and the Primary Authority can block enforcement action being taken in respect of that advice.