this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
28 points (96.7% liked)

Aotearoa / New Zealand

1709 readers
17 users here now

Kia ora and welcome to !newzealand, a place to share and discuss anything about Aotearoa in general

Rules:

FAQ ~ NZ Community List ~ Join Matrix chatroom

 

Banner image by Bernard Spragg

Got an idea for next month's banner?

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Dave
RaoulDuke
28
Chelsea Sugar fined over 2021 lead contamination (www.rnz.co.nz)
submitted 1 week ago by Dave to c/newzealand
27 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 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.