Contamination of food production lines by salmonella.

political analyst

https://www.independent.ie/news/further-recall-of-kinder-products-as-10-salmonella-cases-detected-in-ireland-41525570.html

I guess that how exactly the salmonella got into the products has yet to be discovered but, if it wasn't sabotage, how could it have happened? Salmonella doesn't just jump into a food production line just by itself, least of all in an EU member state - and I believe it was Belgium.

Overheal

Salmonella isn't hard to pick up though. It requires the food production system to be impeccably clean and for raw ingredients to be pasteurized, etc.

Kinder uses dairy products as one example. Dairy comes from cow. Animal feces is just one source of salmonella. Raw and undercooked or expired ingredients can also carry it.

Evidently, an ingredient or step early in the kinder production lines since it affects all the SKUs that facility/line produces. Sabotage is extremely unlikely. SOP breakdown more likely.

28064212

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058240600/contamination-of-food-production-lines-by-salmonella

Salmonella doesn't just jump into a food production line just by itself

...what? Salmonella is a very common occurrence in food production. Food production lines have to work very hard to keep salmonella out

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118891311#Comment_118891311

But pasteurisation neutralises harmful bacteria that could be in the milk, doesn't it?

What exactly might a breakdown in the Standard Operating Procedure (I've never seen the SOP acronym before) that would lead to salmonella contamination involve?

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118895476#Comment_118895476

Those techniques are only guaranteed to a finite percentage (eg. 99.99% etc.) so say if you have a dirty piece of equipment with a 3 year old milk puddle in it, that 0.0001% of bacteria can still have taken the time to culture itself and cause an issue in the production chain. Pasteurization doesn't eliminate milk as being a good place for microorganisms to thrive, either, if they come back across it after pasteurization. We still don't know where it came from of course. SOP can breakdown anywhere for any number of things, primarily human error.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118891311#Comment_118891311

if kinder products contained eggs or derivatives then that is probably the likely source of salmonella rather than dairy.

apache

As long as they don't start recalling the choco fresh....they are delicious..

fly_agaric

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058240600/contamination-of-food-production-lines-by-salmonella

Think it has happened with chocolates/confectionary before (I recall Cadbury having a problem with it years ago, loads of recalls and the like, very similar to this) so doesn't require sabotage. Failures in production processes or quality control are sufficient.

DiamondsBernie

While a lot of production is automated, there is still a need for humans to do their part and ultimately it's just a job for some and they might not do it totally correctly. Until the entire process can be automated you have to account for human involvement which carries a margin of error where things like this will happen.

We always have to remember that there is such a thing as the asymptomatic human carrier state, as in the infamous Thyphoid Mary case. Salmonella is a member of this bacteria family