Cadbury issues statement following court hearing

In the aftermath of the Birmingham Crown Court hearing on Friday, Cadbury has issued the following statement:

“Quality has always been at the heart of our business, but the process we followed in the UK in this instance has been shown to be unacceptable. We have apologised for this and do so again today. In particular, we offer our sincere regrets and apologies to anyone who was made ill as a result of this failure. We have spent over £20 million in changing our procedures to prevent this ever happening again.

At all times we acted in good faith in that we believed at the time leading up to the recall, that the processes we had in place were appropriate to maintain the quality of our products. Mistakenly, we did not believe that there was a threat to health and thus any requirement to report the incident to the authorities - we accept that this approach was incorrect.

“We did not believe that there was a threat to health and thus any requirement to report the incident to the authorities - we accept that this approach was incorrect

Cadbury Ltd statement

Since the recall, we have significantly changed our production and testing processes, working fully with the relevant EHOs and the Food Standards Agency. The processes that led to this failure ceased last year and will never be reinstated.

We sincerely regret these lapses and have undertaken a full review of our quality, procedures globally to learn lessons and ensure that our consumers can rely on the highest levels of processes and standards.”