The boss of a chocolate firm at the centre of a salmonella scare today defended the decision not to launch a product recall in Ireland and Britain as soon as the problem was discovered.
Simon Baldry, managing director of Cadbury, said there was "no need" to take products off the market when a rare strain of the bacteria were found in January.
Mr Baldry told BBC News 24: "Our products were perfectly safe. We'd gone through our rigorous testing process. We'd identified that these were only minute traces."
He denied that the rare strain found in the chocolate had anything to do with the fact that the number of cases of people contracting the strain had quadrupled.
But the Health Protection Agency said that if there was a decline in salmonella montevideo following the product recall it would be "strong evidence" of a link.
Cadbury yesterday announced it was removing more than a million chocolate bars from shop shelves after contamination was detected from a leaking pipe at one of the company's main factories in Marlbrook, Herefordshire.
Cadbury Ireland has recalled two of its chocolate bars the 250g Dairy Milk Turkish and Dairy Milk Caramel.
Cadbury has also asked customers who may have bought or received Cadbury products from Britain or Northern Ireland which are not on sale here to return them to Cadbury headquarters in Coolock, Dublin.
The affected products also include the 1kg Dairy Milk, 75g Dairy Milk, 250g Dairy Milk Mint, 105g Dairy Milk Buttons Easter Egg and Dairy Milk Freddo.
Agencies