The parliamentary select committee charged with investigating standards in the poultry industry has published a letter from 2 Sisters Food Group chief executive Ranjit Boparan.
The letter, published this week, but sent on 16 February, updates the Environment, Food and Rural Affiars (EFRA) committee on work carried out by 2 Sisters to improve standards since last autumn’s incident where workers were filmed by undercover reporters from the Guardian and ITN breaching hygiene standards at the firms West Bromwich cutting plant.
The incident led to huge costs for the firm as it was forced to close the plant for several weeks and retrain staff.
In the letter to the EFRA committee chairman Neil Parish MP, Boparan addresses the pledges he made to the committee when he was publicly grilled last October by the committee.
Among the points, Boparan says 2 Sisters has followed through on its pledge to install CCTV cameras in its plants.
‘The CCTV installation at Site D has now been fully completed,’ the letter states. It goes on to say: ‘The FSA visited Site D w/c 22nd January and were happy with CCTV monitoring now available at the site. Once several of the site implementations are complete we will organise for remote access to the CCTV to be granted to the FSA.’
In addition, Boparan says the firm is now using ‘mystery workers’ to try and root out unacceptable practices. ‘The mystery worker program commenced on 5th February and we will be sharing the outcomes with the FSA,’ the letter says.
2 Sisters is also working on changing the internal culture, says Boparan in the letter. ‘We have devised a comprehensive plan internally and we are in the final stages of appointing an external change consultant,’ the letter says.