Sainsbury's continues to sell food after it's supplier fails food safety inspection

October 07, 2019 at 09:58 AM EDT

Sainsbury's is put on notice by online meal delivery service Fit Kitchen, after the reputational damage one of the supermarket's suppliers has caused following the failing of a BRC food safety inspection

London, Oct 7, 2019 (Issuewire.com) - Sainsbury's is under increasing pressure after London based award-winning entrepreneur Amar Lodhia and founder of the online meal delivery service Fit Kitchen (www.fitkitchen.uk.com), but the supermarket on notice of legal proceedings. Mr. Lodhia's Fit Kitchen is said to have received thousands of misdirected complaints regarding the same name product, Fit Kitchen, produced by Scratch Meals Ltd. BBC's Master Chef Winner, Ash Mair designed the Fit Kitchen range for the Grimsby based manufacturer, which is now exclusive to Sainsbury's.

Through ongoing legal proceedings in the Intellectual Property & Enterprise Court, Mr. Lodhia has forced Scratch Meals to rebrand their Fit Kitchen range to "Fit Box", which is due to happen imminently. Since May last year, members of the public have reported images of glass, metal objects, pieces of plastic and stones being found in this range of Scratch Meal's products. All of these were sent by Mr. Lodhia to North East Lincolnshire council's Environmental Health Team in January, who confirmed to the Food Standards Agency that issues were found at the Scratch Meals site.

In July 2019, Essex based freelance investigative journalist, Suzanne Coen was admitted to hospital and underwent a medical procedure after swallowing a foreign object found in one of the prepared meals produced by Scratch Meals. Another Sainsbury's customer from Reading went into anaphylactic shock whilst driving due to poor labeling of allergens on Scratch Meal's products.

Scratch Meals has supplied Sainsbury's with Fit Kitchen meals (soon to be called Fit Box) since January 2017. On Friday BRC inspectors visited the site and revoked its food safety standards certification. In a comment, BRC Compliance Audit Manager said: "We visited the [Scratch Meals] plant recently and as a consequence [their] certification has been suspended. The site will need to put in place sufficient corrective actions and a further audit will be required for them to regain their certification status."

Just weeks ago, Sainsbury's own Product Safety Lab sent an email by mistake to Mr. Lodhia's Fit Kitchen, in which a Product Safety Analyst confirmed that a Scratch Meal's Fit Kitchen product had been found to have pieces of plastic by a Surrey-based customer. In spite of the safety concerns surrounding its product, Scratch Meals have recently doubled the number of products in the Fit Kitchen range and Sainsbury's have continued to sell these products even after being continually made aware of the food safety issues by the public and Mr. Lodhia. Sainsbury's have also failed to confirm the food safety clearance of their supplier by not providing a statement of truth.

The supermarket's leadership is under mounting pressure from Mr. Lodhia and his legal team to withdraw all products sold by Scratch Meals in all Sainsbury's stores.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

1. All files and related images for this release can be found here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KwSnVQRw9TD1-O0TUfE-jPLD_NweAs44\ (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KwSnVQRw9TD1-O0TUfE-jPL...)

2. BRC' Standards guarantee the standardization of quality, safety, and operational criteria and ensure that manufacturers fulfill their legal obligations and provide protection for the end consumer. Certification to BRC Standards is now a fundamental requirement of leading retailers.