A child in Scotland has died after eating blue cheese that was contaminated with E. coli bacteria. Thus far, the child has been the only reported death, but 19 others have also fallen ill after eating the same cheese.
Health Protection Scotland has sent out a multi-agency incident management team to investigate the situation.
The outbreak has been linked back to a particular Dunsyre Blue cheese, which was made by the cheese company, Errington Cheese, based in Lanarkshire, Scotland. The cheeses with the batch codes C22 or D14, produced between the middle of May and the end of July, were infected with E. coli bacteria.
Officials have requested that any consumers who purchased this cheese to return it, uneaten.
Thankfully, no new cases have been reported of the same infection and illness. The multi-agency incident management team are now working on writing the final report of this outbreak.
Despite all the evidence standing against them, Errington Cheese refuses to accept these claims as being true. They insisted that all its “authority, customer, and farm testing had been completely clear of E. coli” bacteria.
They conducted their own tests of the supposedly contaminated batch and said all six samples tested negative for E. coli.
The company website has released a statement, claiming that Health Protection Scotland is “wrecking the reputation of dairy products in the whole country by making them appear unsafe.”
Health Protection Scotland has yet to reply to Errington Cheese’s lambast, but the multi-agency incident management team has extended their “deepest sympathies to the family of the child who has died.” The team wrote, “Our thoughts are with [the family] at this time and we ask that their privacy be respected.”
