A child has died after an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning that has been linked to a leading cheesemaker.
Advertisement
She said that all confirmed cases became unwell prior to the end of July.
The multi-agency team found that the majority of those affected had consumed the gourmet cheese, made by Errington Cheese in Lanarkshire, before becoming unwell.
Last night, officials refused to reveal any further details of the incident or confirm whether the child had eaten the…
The cheese makers were initially forced to recall two batches and later ordered to halt all sales by Food Standards Scotland.
The last date of illnesses was at the end of July so the IMT will start producing its final report which could take six months.
No new cases have been identified for several weeks and no-one has fallen ill since the voluntary recall on July 29. Mr Errington claimed the watchdog’s ban was “unprecedented” and as the cheese accounted for around two thirds of the firm’s revenue, the business could be “dead” within six months.
O157 infection can occur after eating food or drinking water that is contaminated with the faeces from infected animals, or from contact with animals or their environments.
Last month Errington Cheese said all testing, covering nearly six months from 21 March was clear of E. coli O157 and all authority, customer and farm testing was negative.
“All authority testing is negative for E. coli O157”.
We don’t know why IMT (Incident Management Team) concluded that cheese batches C22 and D14 were responsible for illness as the wholesalers who supplied all the restaurants did not keep a record of which batches went to which customer; any of 10 batches might have been supplied to these restaurants. All customer testing for Ecoli 0157 is negative. All farm testing for E.coli O157 is negative.
“However, our cheese was available over an eight/nine week period”.
The first cases of E. coli 0157 were detected between 2 and 15 July.
Advertisement
Epidemiological investigations identified Dunsyre Blue cheese as the most likely cause of the outbreak.
