The West Bromwich plant is among the three UK sites under threat.
The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) has today announced it is to extend its investigations to other 2 Sisters poultry plants in England and Wales following labelling concerns raised by a Guardian and ITV News investigation.
Employees as the company’s West Bromwich plant were found to be altering ‘kill by’ dates on chickens and breaching other food hygiene issues.
The FSA said it had not identified any food safety issues thus far, but stressed that there are issues ‘requiring management attention’.
Earlier this week, 2 Sisters ‘temporally suspended operations’ at its West Bromwich facility after it found ‘some isolated instances of non-compliance with our own quality management systems’.
As the largest supplier of chicken in the UK, 2 Sisters supplies supermarket chains Marks & Spencer, Aldi, Lidl, Tesco and Sainsbury’s. All have now stopped delivery of poultry from the West Bromwich facility.
FSA chairman Heather Hancock said: “Consumers deserve food they can trust, and can be reassured that we take allegations of poor practice very seriously.
“Although our initial inspection found no risk to public health, we are broadening our investigations until we are satisfied that this is truly the case.”
2 Sisters has 36 manufacturing sites in the UK, eight in the Netherlands, five in Ireland and one in Poland.
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