A leading bacteriology expert has accused Scotland’s food safety authority of being heavy-handed after it banned all cheeses made by a firm linked to an E coli outbreak that killed a three-year-old girl.
In an emergency notice circulated across the UK on Wednesday night, Food Standards Scotland (FSS) ordered shops and restaurants to withdraw every cheese made by Errington Cheese after it said E coli had been found across the firm’s range.
Prof Sir Hugh Pennington, an authority on bacteriology and food safety, said he had substantial doubts that the agency’s decision was proportionate and feared it may have gone too far in banning its entire range.
He said he had seen little scientific evidence to implicate every Errington product, and had doubts about the tests used to detect the potentially lethal bacteria. The firm, which has pioneered artisanal cheesemaking in Scotland, has said its own testing had found no trace of E coli in any of its six varieties.
“They’ve come down on [Errington Cheese] very, very heavily indeed,” Pennington told BBC Radio Scotland. “I think there’s still an issue here about the science behind this decision, in terms of whether the decision is basically proportionate because that’s the gold standard you have in this kind of decision.
“Is this proportionate? Is there a risk to the public? Should the food be withdrawn?”
In its latest statement, FSS said it had sent out “immediate instructions to withdraw from sale all cheese produced by Errington Cheese Ltd currently in distribution and to withhold from sale any cheese not yet on the market, as these products are a potential risk to consumers’ health.
“Both O157 and non-O157 strains of E coli have been detected in a number of different types of cheese produced by Errington Cheese Ltd.”
The order, which the firm’s owners believe will force them out of business, comes after the FSS banned two batches of one of its best known brands, Dunsyre Blue, from sale last month.
Pennington, who has given expert evidence in some of the UK’s biggest poisoning outbreaks and advised the UK Food Standards Agency, said a regulator had to take precautionary action in some cases. He told the Guardian on Monday he believed FSS’s handling of the Dunsyre Blue case had been “a mess”.
There was a “moderately strong case” linking Dunsyre Blue to the outbreak in July, which affected 20 people and is alleged to have been the likely cause of the girl’s death. But Pennington said the jury was still out on that.
“For the other cases, I don’t think there’s any scientific evidence that they have E coli O157 in them and by putting a blanket ban on all the cheeses it’s suggesting the business itself doesn’t have very good hygiene and I haven’t heard any evidence that that’s the case,” he said.
“They would’ve been closed down long since if they did because it’s been inspected by local environmental health officers. So there’s a big issue there about proportionality.”
He added: “The question here I think is: have they gone too far in overinterpreting scientific evidence? And yeah, I think that’s a real possibility.”
On Saturday, FSS said traces of E coli O157 were found in Errington’s Lanark White brand and ordered two batches to be withdrawn. The watchdog followed up with an inspection of Errington’s factory near Carnwath in South Lanarkshire on Tuesday, taking away samples of various cheeses.
Errington has insisted its own programme of rigorous testing has found no trace of E coli in any of its cheeses: it had the Lanark White batches identified by the FSS on Saturday tested by two separate laboratories and cleared by both.
Humphrey Errington, the company’s founder, said he and his daughter Selina Cairns, who now runs the firm, were absolutely horrified by the agency’s decision. He said FSS had linked two recent fresh poisoning cases to their products, which the agency said that had justified its far tougher action.
His daughter had been given 15 minutes by the FSS to agree to a voluntary recall on Wednesday but Errington said the family had refused to do so because senior microbiologists they had consulted said the FSS evidence against them “was just piffle”.
“I have spoken to some of the most senior microbiologists in Britain and they say that there’s absolutely no evidence offered to us of pathogenicity in any of our cheeses. We’ve submitted a huge bundle of stuff to microbiologists and that is their view. They have told us we should not agree to a recall,” Errington said.
The total ban now involves all six ranges of Errington Cheese, including three previously unaffected brands: its signature brand, Lanark Blue, Maisie’s Kebbuck, a hard cow’s milk cheese, and Cora Linn, a hard sheep’s milk cheese.
