Crook kabana is costly

Woolies fined $45,000 for dated stock

A PACKET of expired kabana lay at the back of a display fridge for more than five months at a Cairns Woolworths before it was found by health inspectors.

The supermarket giant has been fined $45,000 after failing to remove numerous out-ofdate products for sale at the Abbott St store.

Queensland Health inspectors, conducting a statewide audit, found 13 out-of-date items including the kabana, which had been expired for 168 days.

Food that had gone off had already been found at Roma and Mission Beach Woolworths stores before the inspectors reached Cairns.

The Cairns Magistrates Court was told the Abbott St store was aware of this and had even increased staff hours in an effort to remove any expired food from shelves. There were also daily checks in place.

“In the face of existing pro- cedures developed by the store to address this issue there was still a systemic failure,” Magistrate Kerry Magee said.

The majority of the food was deli meats including frankfurts, salami, kabana, smoked chicken breast fillets and chorizo. Other out-of-date products were sourdough bread, pumpkin and fetta pasta, mozzarella, soup, dip and gravy.

Most of the items had been expired between one and 10 days. One of the items also had damaged labelling. Woolworths pleaded guilty to 12 charges of breaching the Food Act.

The company confirmed that improvements to in-store processes since the 2016 findings included increased training of staff, more time allocated to checking dates of products and increased rostering of team members.

“We have co-operated with the Department of Health since we were notified of the findings in 2016 and introduced … new processes and improvements in our stores since then to ensure food safety and quality standards are met,” a spokeswoman said.

Woolworths must also pay $2842.55 in court costs. The total must be paid within 30 days.