Serious hygiene breaches have been alleged at chicken factories with links to similar processing plants on Tayside.
The incidents, allegedly uncovered through a five-month probe by The Guardian newspaper, include a factory floor being flooded with the guts of chickens and carcasses coming into contact with workers’ boots and then being returned to the production line.
Both the 2 Sisters Food Group who have plants at Coupar Angus, Perthshire and Letham, Angus and Faccenda were targeted in the probe, which took in undercover footage and information from whistleblowers relating to industry hygiene standards to prevent the contamination of chicken with the campylobacter bug.
The two companies deny the allegations.
A spokesperson for the 2 Sisters Food Group said: “The allegations about our processing sites at Scunthorpe and Llangefni concerning our business and our management of campylobacter are untrue, misleading and inaccurate.”
Campylobacter is the most common identified cause of food poisoning in the UK. Despite cooking killing the bug, around 280,000 people in the UK are made ill each year by it and 100 people are understood to die.
The Food Standards Agency has agreed to conduct an immediate safety audit of the 2 Sisters Food Group plants mentioned.
Around 230 staff from the 2 Sisters Food Group Coupar Angus plant lost their jobs in January in a cost-cutting exercise.