The owner of Scotland’s Errington Cheese Ltd. told a court this week that her business did not test its products for a harmful strain of E.coli that claimed the life of a 3-year-old child during a 2016 outbreak.
Selina Cairns said her firm did not carry out spot checks on the raw milk used in its cheeses to detect E.coli 0157. The company was linked to the 2016 outbreak that also sickened 25 other people, but the Crown Office declined to pursue criminal proceedings because of a lack of evidence linking the firm to the death of the girl from Dunbartonshire.
No traces of E.coli 0157 were found in cheeses made by Errington, but other types of the bacteria were, which led food safety agencies to name the firm’s as the source of the outbreak.
The company makes a range of products from unpasteurized milk on its farm in Carnwath, Lanarkshire. Environmental workers seized batches of its Lanark Blue and Corra Linn cheeses as a result of the 2016 outbreak.
Now, the firm is locked in a battle with South Lanarkshire Council, which is attempting to have cheese produced by the manufacturer declared unfit for human consumption and destroyed. At a civil hearing at Hamilton Sheriff Court, Cairns said there was conflicting guidance about the need to test for the bug, and that she had been advised it was not necessary, according to a report in The Scotsman newspaper.
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