Ministry: Firm was negligent in tainted cornflakes scandal

The Health Ministry says it has suspended a manufacturing license given to multinational corporation Unilever, after cornflakes tainted with salmonella managed to reach Israeli consumers.

The ministry says in a statement it carried out a check of the Arad plant, with the full cooperation of the company, and found Unilever to have been negligent, but not malicious, in running the plant.

“This was a series of negligent mistakes, and not an incident with malicious intent from the side of the firm’s management and quality control procedures,” the statement reads.

The company initially refused to alert the public, saying that the tainted cereal had not left the plant, but only late last week admitted some 240 boxes had reached consumers.

The ministry says in a statement its investigation is ongoing and the source of the bacterial outbreak has not been located.

“Given the incident, and together with the hearing, the Good Manufacturing Practice license of the company has been suspended, until they carry out a number of fixes and report on them,” the statement reads.