By Michael O’Farrell
SUPERMARKET chain Iceland has withdrawn a range of Indian pre-prepared food in its Irish outlets after an ITV investigation found unhygienic practices at a supplier’s food production plant.

The retailer yesterday confirmed that a six-pack onion bhaji product made by British producer Perkins had been withdrawn as a precautionary measure.

The investigation, aired on ITV’s Tonight with Trevor McDonald, led Iceland to take thousands of packets of Perkins’ Premier Nuggets off the shelves of their English outlets after secret filming at a supplier’s plant revealed poor hygiene practices.

Manager of Iceland’s Talbot Street store in Dublin John McKenna confirmed the Perkins’ products had been taken off the shelves pending the outcome of an investigation into the food safety breech.

“They do produce some products for us which we don’t sell very much of in Ireland, but we have taken off a six-pack onion bhaji as a precautionary measure,” Mr McKenna said.

The footage, recorded secretly by an undercover reporter posing as a worker at a Perkins Frozen Foods plant in Stoke-on-Trent, showed staff were not obliged to wash their hands. Further footage shows nuggets which had fallen on the floor being swept up and thrown back into a container to be put back into the nugget mix.

The programme makers also uncovered further unsavoury practices. A manager was filmed taking workers on to the factory floor without going through the wash area and dirty boots with chicken mix on the soles were left out to be worn without being cleaned.

It had been thought that the problem affected only UK outlets but Iceland confirmed yesterday that its eight stores in the Republic had also withdrawn the Perkins onion bhaji product because it was processed in the same facility as Perkins’ Premier Nuggets.

A spokesperson for Perkins said the company did not believe any other Irish outlets would be affected. “Things are still at an early stage but we don’t believe anything else will be affected,” he said. “A certain amount of action has been taken already. For legal reasons we can’t discuss anything involving staff but other actions relevant to hygiene practices in general may be possible,” the spokesman added.

Perkins denied allegations that independent tests carried out for the programme on the chicken nuggets found they contained 35.1% meat although packaging stated they contained 41%.

“This is not correct,” the spokesman said adding that the company had been approved by British standards officers and had also been given a clean bill of health by food inspectors.