CADBURY’S was under investigation last night over why it kept silent for six months about salmonella contamination at one of its factories before removing one million chocolate bars from the shelves.

The Food Standards Agency has asked Cadbury Schweppes, which sells chocolate worth £1 billion a year in the UK, to explain why it failed to alert them immediately after discovering salmonella at its Malbrook plant near Leominster, Herefordshire, in January.

Cadbury’s denied yesterday that there had been a cover-up. A spokeswoman insisted that the recall was a precautionary measure because some chocolate might contain minute traces of salmonella and that there “was no risk to human health”.

A separate investigation has been started into a possible link between contaminated bars of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate and cases of food poisoning in babies and toddlers since March.

The Health Protection Agency is concerned about 45 cases of the rare salmonella montevideo strain in England and Wales — the same bug found in the Cadbury’s factory — which has affected eight infants under the age of 1 and 22 under 4 since March. Last year there were only 14 cases in the same period.

Salmonella can be fatal and in serious cases it affects the lymph glands, and the bacteria can enter the blood. Mild infection, which includes diarrhoea, sickness and stomach cramps, is usually cleared up within four to seven days.

A spokesman for the food agency said: “We would have expected to be told immediately. We do not expect to find salmonella in chocolate bars.”

It may be some days before the health agency receives test results to establish if there is a link between the cases of food poisoning and the contaminated chocolate.

Cadbury’s yesterday ordered the recall of more than a million bars from sale and admitted that the chocolate might have been contaminated with salmonella since January.

It is clear, however, that relations between the food agency and Cadbury’s are strained. The watchdog is particularly irritated that even though Cadbury’s disclosed on Monday the presence of the bug in chocolate, it took the company until Thursday evening to agree a recall.

The withdrawal from sale of the million bars is the equivalent of a third of Britain's daily consumption of Cadbury's chocolate. While the cost to the company, which manufactures 2,500 products, is expected to be low, the damage to its reputation could be significant. It has made chocolate for more than 100 years.

Most of the suspect chocolate is already likely to have been eaten. One of the lines is an easter egg, whose production has ended.

A Cadbury’s spokeswoman denied yesterday that the company had delayed releasing the information until production runs such as the Easter egg had ended. She said that there were logistical reasons for delaying a public announcement.

The company is blaming the contamination on a leaky pipe, found at the factory in January, which was near a production line. One possibility is that rats, mice or even a wild bird, which can carry the salmonella montevideo strain, may have been watering from the pipe and contaminated the plant.

The pipe was fixed immediately, but tests are routinely taken three times a day at eight-hourly intervals at the plant to check for contamination of ingredients, the production line and finished products. Cadbury’s contracts the test analysis to a private laboratory, which detected the salmonella contamination and informed the company.

The spokeswoman said that the company had decided to recall the chocolate, given public concern about salmonella.

She insisted that the salmonella traces were so small there was no obligation to report them because risks to human health were so low. She said that it was not expected that people would fall ill from such tiny contamination.

There would have had to be a million cells in a 100g of chocolate to give anyone any illness. There was just 0.3 parts of a million in the contaminated chocolate, she said. The company’s own alert system would have withdrawn any product with contamination at 10 parts per million per 100g.

“We have followed the regulations. The FSA will have to decide if we need a new regulation and we are willing to work with them on that,” she said.

The factory at Marlbrook generates 97,000 tonnes of milk chocolate crumb every year. The crumb is transported to other sites at Bournville, near Birmingham, and Somerdale, near Bristol, to be blended with cocoa butter and turned into milk chocolate.

• The free helpline number for Cadbury is 0800 818181.

  Uneaten products should be returned to Cadbury Recall, Freepost MID20061, Birmingham B3O 2QZ, and a refund will be given.
  
  

• 10p Freddo bar.

  SWEET PROFITS

• The annual revenue for Cadbury Schweppes in 2005 in the UK was just over £1 billion
  
  
• The recall is a third of Britain’s daily consumption of Cadbury’s chocolate. This represents nearly 1 per cent of company’s annual UK turnover
  
  
• Cadbury’s has a 30 per cent share of the UK confectionery market
  
  
• Cadbury’s flagship brand, Dairy Milk, the market leader, celebrated its 100th birthday in 2005
  
  
• Cadbury’s introduced smaller packs across some of its bar ranges last year, with each carrying the claim “under 99 calories”
  
  
• Dairy Milk sales rose 7 per cent in 2005

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