Redbridge prosecution success

A London caterer has been fined £7,000, plus £12,000 costs, for a food-poisoning outbreak that struck down 47 guests at a wedding reception in Ilford last year.

Wasif Samir, owner of the Abohammad restaurant in Bayswater, admitted two of four food-safety charges brought against him by Redbridge London Borough Council.

His restaurant had supplied the food to Praba's Banqueting Suite in Ilford for the wedding on August 7, 1999.

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard that high levels of clostridium perfringens and bacillus cereus had been found in a hot buffet of roast lamb and naan bread which had been stored unrefrigerated for more than 29 hours. The bacteria were also found in samples from the wedding guests.

Environmental Health News, the magazine for the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, described the prosecution as a "rare success" following a string of failures in which council prosecutions were lost, often on legal technicalities.

Food safety consultant Richard North said current law made food prosecutions increasingly hard to win, especially in cases of community outbreaks where people were not infected at the same place and time, and food samples were not available.

He believed the absence of a specific offence of causing food poisoning outbreaks forced health officials to prosecute for serving unfit food, which was technically much harder to prove.