Meat processor convicted of food safety and hygiene breaches

Sunrise Meats, a meat processor based in Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west, has been fined $41,250 for a number of food and hygiene breaches. The company was convicted and sentenced for various breaches of the Food Act 2003 and ordered to pay professional costs of $10,000.

The company, which is licensed under the NSW Food Authority to operate a meat processing business, pleaded guilty to 11 charges following a series of breaches of the hygiene regulations investigated by the NSW Food Authority that lead to the issuing of a prohibition order.

The charges were:

• Hygiene, sanitation and cleanliness breaches (three charges).
• Contravene the provisions of the Food Safety Scheme (three charges).
• Fail to comply with the conditions of licence (three charges).
• Fail to comply with requirement imposed by a food safety scheme in relation to the preparation, implementation, maintenance, monitoring, certification or auditing of a food safety program (one charge).
• Contravene a Prohibition Order (one charge).

The breaches included: failure to maintain fixtures, fittings and equipment to a required standard; handling food in a manner that failed to properly address the risk of contamination, namely meat being stored on the floor near a drain, on unclean benches and in contact with unclean wall tiles; and failure to have effective and continuous pest control in place.

“The NSW Food Authority is dedicated to protecting the health of NSW consumers and ensuring the food produced and sold in this state is safe and suitable for human consumption,” said NSW Food Authority CEO Polly Bennett.

“The important work that our officers do in regularly inspecting and auditing food businesses helps to improve food safety standards and reduce the incidence of foodborne illness.”