Grossman sauce recalled in botulism scare

The two victims, from the same family Scotland, are in a stable but serious condition, the Food Standards Agency in Britain said.

According to the agency the outbreak involves only one jar of the sauce, but as a precaution it has recalled the entire batch which was produced in August.

While many of the bottles have been sold, those which remain on the shelves are being removed by the small number of supermarkets that had them in stock.

Trouble

Botulism is caused by toxins produced by a potentially fatal bacterium called Clostridium botulinum, which attacks the nervous system and can affect people of any age.

This is the latest trouble to befall Premier Foods, which is Britain's biggest food manufacturer, which markets the sauces.

It was the company behind the Sudan 1 food scare in 2005, one of the biggest food scandals of the last decade, which saw 350 different products pulled from shelves over fears that a Worcester sauce had become contaminated with an illegal red food dye, known as Sudan 1.

The botulism scare will be a fresh blow to Premier Foods which, along with many of its rivals, struggled with the escalating cost of food ingredients, especially cooking oil, flour and sugar. Premier, which owns some of Britain's best known brands such as Mr Kipling, Oxo and Branston pickle, fell out with Tesco last year when it tried to pass on the high price of wheat and demanded a higher price for loaves of Hovis bread.

Tesco retaliated and refused to stock about half of all of Hovis's products -- a move that hit Premier's profits hard.

hnews@herald.ie