U.K.’s FSA Confident That Hygiene Problems At Chicken Abattoir Have Been Put Right

Britain’s Food Standards Agency admitted it goofed when it recently cleared one of the country’s biggest chicken processors of charges of lapses in hygiene. Workers at the processing plant had claimed that chickens dropped on the floor had been returned to the production line, a clear “breach of the legislation” the FSA has now acknowledged. A report by the newspaper Guardian was followed by an FSA inspection that found no problems at the Scunthorpe abattoir. In reversing the favorable ruling, the agency issued no penalties because Scunthorpe, which supplies chicken to leading U.K. retail chains, promised that the problems have been patched up.