A dozen members of staff have been suspended at a NHS hospital food manufacturer after a Channel 4 documentary exposed alleged breakdowns in hygiene practices.

The Dispatches programme, which used undercover footage shot at a manufacturing plant owned by Tillery Valley Foods, was the subject of an attempted high court injunction on Monday.

The firm rushed to court after Shine, the production company run by Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, refused to hand over footage shot at the plant by an undercover Peruvian journalist.

Mr Justice Mann refused the injunction and told Tillery Valley it could "not assume you would get an easy ride" getting permission to appeal.

The documentary poked holes in the government's recent initiative to improve the standards of hospital food, showing that many "cook-chill-reconstitute" meals were nutritionally deficient.

The footage shot at Tillery Valley's Welsh plant showed an alleged breakdown in hygiene standards, including evidence of the e-coli bacteria.

Workers were filmed eating from food production lines, failing to properly clean cooking and storage vessels, picking their noses and failing to wear regulation rubber gloves.

The secret footage also showed undercover journalist Fernando Lucena taking swabs from vessels used to prepare food, which was then confirmed to show traces of the e-coli bacteria by independent experts.

The firm's managing director, Michelle Hanson, said this morning staff had been suspended following the programme.

"Twelve members of staff have been suspended as a result of the broadcast and are the subject of disciplinary action," Ms Hanson said.

"In order to ensure that such incidents do not occur again, we have increased the level of supervision on all production lines and have installed CCTV throughout the factory"

The documentary, which showed workers on one side of the factory were unsupervised for large parts of their shifts, drew an audience of nearly 2.5 million on Channel 4 last night.

Tillery Valley Foods is part of French catering giant Sodexo and supplies around 25 million meals a year.

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