Hotel told to pay out £10,000 over food poisoning

A HOTEL and restaurant in North Yorkshire has been ordered to pay more then £10,000 after 18 people got ill after eating undercooked chicken liver pâté.

Diversorium Ltd, which owns the Downe Arms in Wykeham, pleaded guilty to two offences under Food Hygiene and Safety Regulations at Scarborough Magistrates’ Court.

The charges were brought by Scarborough Borough Council’s Environmental Health team after complaints from the public.

Mark Robinson, prosecuting, told the court that its team had been contacted by an employee of Yorkshire Bank, which had held a Christmas party at the hotel on December 17, 2016.

He said: “The employee said that herself and a number of other staff had fallen ill following the night there.

“The only common food item they had all eaten from the Christmas menu was the chicken liver pâté.”

He said that 18 people had fallen ill, with nine of them being medically diagnosed as suffering from campylobacter poisoning. The council started an investigation and visited the Downe Arms in January of this year.

Mr Robinson added: “During the visit other issues were identified, which included cooked and raw meat cutting boards being stored next to each other and cooked and raw meat being stored together.”

He said there was no pâté left in the kitchen to test and the chef could not provide any proof that the terrine had reached the 74-degree temperature for three minutes required before serving. There were also missing entries from the restaurant’s Safer Food, Better Business Diary. He added that the hotel’s hygiene rating was now back at four out of five.

Environmental Health concluded the pâté was “almost certainly” the cause of the outbreak.

In mitigation, Robert Vining told the court the chef had been sacked following the incident.

He said the director, Phillip Dark, who was in court, was “horrified” by what had happened and had replaced the chef and a number of the staff.

The court fined Diversorium Ltd £8,000 in total for the two offences and ordered it to pay £2,170 in costs.