The Sydney Morning Herald reports that coroner Jane Culver has found that a Sydney restaurant served asparagus sauce contaminated with bacteria in January last year, leading to the death of William Hodgkins, 81, because of slack procedures in its handling of the sauce.
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The sauce, which was served with the fish of the day at Tables restaurant in Pymble on January 12, 2007, had 9.8 million colony-producing units of Bacillus cereus per gram.
Ms Culver said the sauce was made at 3pm the day before, on January 11, and refrigerated. It was taken out of the refrigerator on January 12 but not discarded after four hours of use. Four hours is the recommended amount of time for the sauce to be used after being refrigerated, Ms Culver said.
Instead of being thrown out, it was placed in a coolroom so that it could be used for serving meals.
Ms Culver said the container for the sauce had no label showing when it was made or when it should be discarded.