RIGA - The Riga city department of the Food and Veterinary Service has slapped Maxima, one of Latvia's top two grocers, with a 1,000 lat (1,422 euro) fine for breaches of hygiene and veterinary regulations at one of its supermarkets.
Solveiga Smiltene, a veterinary spokeswoman, said the Maxima chain was also fined with separate 500 and 300 lat fines for breaches at two other locations and that product assortment was now limited in one of the stores and operations at the other temporarily suspended.
The largest fine, however, was levied on a store where the same violations had occurred twice in the course of one year.
Smiltene added that at the veterinary center's national diagnostics center analyses of the food samples taken at Maxima store clearly demonstrated ineffective cleaning and disinfection procedures.
"Of the 10 surface washing samples, Escherichia coli bacteria were found on five… proving the inefficiency of the cleaning and disinfection procedures at the company," she said.
"In the 10 repeated samples taken on June 6, Escherichia coli group bacteria were found in two samples 's on plastic spoons and metal forms of the cold snacks, proving that the cleaning measures undertaken were not effective enough," Smiltene said.
The samples taken on June 2 (stewed vegetables and pasta with meat) demonstrated the increased bacteria count, showing evident problems in the grocer's technological processes.
Worse, samples of beet salads and pork with pineapples, taken on the same day, uncovered the presence of salmonella.
Operations of the gastronomy floor suspended at one of the Maxima stores have not restarted as of yet, according to reports.
The veterinary service suspended the operations of the hot food counter at Maxima XXX after several people who had eaten the food became ill. In another grocery store, veterinary officials prohibited the preparation of hot food and forced the store managers to limit the amount of the gastronomy products stored in a cooled state.
A third Maxima in Riga was also closed, though it was allowed to reopen after a second inspection.
Maxima Latvija is one of the largest grocers in Latvia. It is owned by Lithuania's VP group, the largest retailer in the Baltics.
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Lithuania's Competition Council suspects that Maxima LT acquired and leased real estate in various cities and towns around the country in 2002 's 2006 in violation of anti-trust legislation.
The authority said on June 12 that it had decided to launch a probe into whether Maxima's actions were in line with the Competition Law.
The council expressed the preliminary opinion that Maxima LT should have informed competition authorities about these transactions since annual revenue of the companies from which it purchased or leased real property exceeded the 5 million litas (1.5 million euros) limit set by the law.
"If it is established that Maxima LT had the obligation to notify [the council] of these transactions, the company might be obliged to restore the previous situation or eliminate the consequences of these transactions," Palmira Kvietkauskiene, the authority's spokeswoman, said.
Maxima LT operates over 220 stores in Lithuania.
