CHOCOLATE recalled by Cadbury in a salmonella scare is still on sale across Manchester, the M.E.N. can reveal.

Our reporter visited nine shops and discovered four retailers were selling snacks which should have been taken off the shelves.

Cadbury withdrew seven of its products from sale on Friday. ( Cadbury product recall.)

They are the 250g Dairy Milk Turkish, Dairy Milk Caramel and Dairy Milk Mint bars; the Dairy Milk eight chunk; the 1kg Dairy Milk Bar; the 105g Dairy Milk Buttons Easter Egg and the 10p Freddo bar.

A statement on the Food Standards Agency (FSA) website warns: "These products do not comply with food safety requirements due to possible contamination with salmonella."

On shelves

It asks local authorities to contact businesses and ensure the products are removed "using the powers under the Food Safety Act if necessary".

But despite this, goods which should have been withdrawn were still openly available three days later.

The M.E.N. reporter bought bars which should have been recalled from BP's Wilbraham Road garage, from Shell on Princess Parkway in Whalley Range, from Star News on Wilbraham News in Chorlton and from Amla News, on Withington Road in Whalley Range.

The FSA said that it was the duty of local authorities to act on their message.

But a spokesperson from Manchester city council's environmental health department told the M.E.N. that Cadbury needed to inform retailers first.

'Surprised'

She added that officers had been out all day checking potential suppliers and had found that around half still had the product on display.

A Cadbury spokesman was "very surprised" that recalled chocolate was on sale, but said there were a lot of retailers to contact and that they were "working very hard" to make sure all the bars were removed from sale.

The contamination was caused by a leaking pipe at one of Cadbury's factories at the Marlbrook plant, near Leominster in Herefordshire.

At the time of the recall of more than a million bars of chocolate, a spokesman for Cadbury said: "This is being done purely as a precautionary measure as some of these products may contain minute traces of salmonella".

Cadbury has come under fire from the FSA for failing to report the contamination when it was discovered five months ago.

A spokesman for BP said they only supplied fuel to the outlet in question and were not responsible for other goods.

Station manager Mohamed Imtiaz said he had since removed the products after a call from environmental health officers, but said Cadbury had not contacted him.

Mistake

Anwer Master, from Star News, said that the product had been taken off the shelves but was put back by mistake.

The environmental health department had contacted him but not Cadbury. He said he had first been alerted to the problem when he read about it in a newspaper.

No one would comment at Shell or Amla News.

The following retailers had correctly removed affected chocolate from their shelves:

Asda (Hulme), Forbuoys (Chorlton), Sainsbury's Local (Deansgate), Woolworths (Chorlton), Lidl (Whalley Range).

* The free helpline number for Cadbury is 0800 818181. Uneaten products should be returned to Cadbury Recall, Freepost MID20061, Birmingham B30 2QZ, and a refund will be given.

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