A food alert has been sent to grocery stores in east London about farm-crafted cheese made with unpasteurised milk said to be linked to an E coli outbreak in Scotland.
The outbreak has affected 22 people and led to the death of a three-year-old girl, according to the Food Standards Agency.
Eight brands have been recalled, listed in the agency’s alert sent to Tower Hamlets Council public health office.
Strains of E coli have been detected in two brands of Errington Cheese from a farm in Lanarkshire which it said makes the products “a potential risk to health”, the agency said.
But all seven Errington brands have been banned from sale—Maisie’s Kebbuck, Lanark Blue, Lanark White, Dunsyre Blue, Dunsyre Baby, Cora Linn and Sir Lancelot—which could have been bought over the counter up until last Thursday.
The cheeses predominately distributed in Scotland may have been supplied further south to wholesalers, specialist cheese shops, delicatessens, restaurants and online.
No evidence was published that some Errington cheeses it has banned such as Maisie’s Kebbuck, Lanark Blue or Cora Linn were linked to E coli. But they were ordered off the shelves because of doubts about the safety of the production methods as a whole.
Errington, a pioneer in producing small batch, ‘artisan’ cheeses, insisted its own rigorous testing before and after the E coli cases came to light had found no traces of the bug.
Tower Hamlets council is warning shoppers who may have bought the brands to return them to the shop or online retailer and call the local authority. The Environmental Health and Trading Standards office is on 020-7364 5008 or email foodsafety@towerhamlets.gov.uk
One of the brands, Maisie’s Kebbuck—an unpasteurised semi-hard white cow’s milk cheese crafted in a traditional farmhouse manner by wrapping it in a cloth and maturing for up to five months—is promoted on its website as being made by Humphrey Errington “who invented it to impress his mother-in-law who did not like blue cheese”.
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