No salmonella-hit chocolate entered meals chain: Swiss agency

Swiss agency Barry Callebaut mentioned on Friday no salmonella-contaminated chocolate had been shipped to purchasers, a day after acknowledging it had halted manufacturing on the world’s largest chocolate manufacturing facility, in Belgium.

“Based mostly on inside investigation, Barry Callebaut confirms that no chocolate merchandise affected by the salmonella-positive manufacturing lot in Wieze, Belgium, entered the retail meals chain,” the corporate mentioned in a press release.

It added that following the completion of analyses all chocolate manufacturing traces on the Wieze manufacturing facility can be cleaned and disinfected earlier than resuming manufacturing.

Swiss group Barry Callebaut is the world’s largest provider of cocoa and chocolate merchandise to the meals trade, supplying firms akin to Hershey, Mondelez, Nestle and Unilever.

The corporate mentioned on Thursday that manufacturing had been halted on Monday after the contamination was found.

The Wieze plant doesn’t make goodies to be bought on to customers and the corporate mentioned that many of the merchandise found to be contaminated had been nonetheless on web site.

It had already confirmed on Thursday with most purchasers that probably contaminated chocolate had not been shipped to shops.

Barry Callebaut high quality management specialists recognized lecithin, added to clean meals textures, because the supply of the contamination.

Publicity to salmonella micro organism can lead to salmonellosis, a illness that causes diarrhoea and fever however is barely harmful in probably the most excessive circumstances.

The scare comes a couple of weeks after a case of goodies contaminated with salmonella on the Ferrero manufacturing facility in Arlon, southern Belgium, which manufactures Kinder goodies.

Barry Callebaut employs greater than 13,000 individuals and has greater than 60 manufacturing websites worldwide.

© 2022 AFP