this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Chelsea Sugar fined over 2021 lead contamination (www.rnz.co.nz)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Dave to c/newzealand
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Chelsea Sugar (also known as the New Zealand Sugar Company) has been fined $149,500 for importing and selling sugar products tainted with lead.

More than 970 tonnes of products were manufactured from sugar contaminated during sea transportation from Australia, resulting in the company recalling thousands of products in late 2021.

Two more recalls were needed when it was revealed incorrect information was provided to supermarkets resulting in more tainted goods being released to consumers.

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[–] eagleeyedtiger 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It seems neither of us know enough about the industry to speculate, but logically speaking, if they had followed the correct MPI processes and the process itself was at fault a fine wouldn't have been levied against them in the first place.

Like the food safety guy said; they had a responsibility to manage any potential risks to consumers. It's not like they are a new inexperienced business, they've been in the same business for over 100 years. This did happen almost four years ago, I'm fairly confident that they've made enough profit in that time to easily pay this fine without breaking a sweat.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 week ago

if they had followed the correct MPI processes and the process itself was at fault a fine wouldn’t have been levied against them in the first place.

While true, if the incident was avoidable but understandable (e.g. some human error thing while following an MPI process), then they might only get a small fine. There might be reasons for the fine being small, it would be nice if they explained them in more details (like fine of $5m, 20% discount for no issues in previous 10 years, 20% discount for taking active steps to prevent the issue again, etc).

Like the food safety guy said; they had a responsibility to manage any potential risks to consumers. It’s not like they are a new inexperienced business, they’ve been in the same business for over 100 years. This did happen almost four years ago, I’m fairly confident that they’ve made enough profit in that time to easily pay this fine without breaking a sweat.

Yeah, my benefit of the doubt status is out the window now based on the stuff you've pointed out. It would be nice to know how they came up with that figure.