Woolworths has issued an apology for the "distress or inconvenience" caused by episodes involving pests in its Countdown supermarkets — and admitting that "improvements" can be made.
The admission comes after a rat was photographed in the deli section of Dunedin South Countdown in November. The store was forced to close for deep cleaning last weekend after four more rats were discovered.
A mouse was subsequently filmed crawling through the salad section of Countdown Eastgate in Christchurch on February 7. While the salad was disposed of, other items around the dish were not immediately removed and two further sales were made of items from the section that night.
In a statement this afternoon, Woolworths New Zealand director of stores Jason Stockill said the supermarket giant took "food safety and pest control seriously and apologise to our customers for the distress or inconvenience these reports may have caused".
Stockill said pests were "a common challenge in food environments", particularly during the summer.
"While it is normal for them to attempt to enter food premises, it’s our responsibility to do everything possible to keep them out and remove them if they do enter."
He said there were pest management plans in place for all 194 Countdown stores across the country but "recent events have highlighted that there are improvements we can make to ensure our processes and procedures are followed".
"What we have seen play out in the last couple of weeks is not acceptable to us or to our customers."
Stockill said Woolworths would be taking actions to "ensure that our pest management is performing as it should be", including issuing a food safety alert reminding their teams of the practices and procedures in place to deal with pests, as well as following up with inspections across its stores by Woolworths NZ's operations senior leadership team.
Woolworths NZ would also be reviewing its work with pest control contractor Rentokil "to ensure that any pest management challenges are being appropriately escalated and addressed, and that the right information is accessible".
A review was also underway into "internal escalation processes to ensure that our team are confident in raising and escalating concerns about pest management".
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