It would come to be known as 'Slug Gate': A health scandal that sparked two Victorian Parliamentary Inquiries, in which a slug took centre stage.
The mollusc, allegedly found in the factory of a catering company blamed for supplying contaminated food to a private hospital, where an elderly patient died, came to symbolise the questionable evidence used by the Victorian Health Department to shut down a 30-year-old family business.
It's the afternoon of February 22, 2019 and Victoria's acting Chief Health Officer, Professor Brett Sutton, appears at a press conference to deliver an urgent public health alert.
An elderly woman has died at Knox Private Hospital from complications associated with listeriosis. In plain English, she was infected with the listeria bacteria - which had allegedly been traced to contaminated food supplied by the hospital's sole catering firm: I Cook Foods.
Sutton's tone is alarming as he underscores the danger faced by Victorians.
"Potentially thousands of people have been exposed," he says. "We don't know the level of listeria contamination that might have occurred."
In response to the listeria outbreak, Sutton announces he has ordered the closure of I Cook Foods and the destruction of ten tonnes of their food products. To the public it seems like decisive action by the health department bureaucrat who would become Victoria's public face of the Covid pandemic.
To the company at the centre of the emergency - I Cook Foods - it is devastating....
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