A cheesemaker did not test its products for a strain of E. coli that killed a three-year-old child during a food poisoning outbreak.
Selina Cairns, owner of Errington Cheese, told a court that her company did not carry out spot checks on the raw milk used in its cheeses to detect the bacteria.
The company was linked to an outbreak of food poisoning in 2016 in which the girl died. No traces of the O157 strain of E. coli that infected 26 patients were found in cheeses made by Errington but other types of the bacteria were and food safety agencies named its Dunsyre Blue as the source of the outbreak.
The Crown Office said that there would be no criminal proceedings because of a lack of evidence linking the company to the death of the young girl from Dunbartonshire.
Several products are made from unpasteurised milk on Errington’s farm in Carnwath, Lanarkshire. Council environmental health officers seized batches of its Lanark Blue, in which E. coli was also found, and Corra Linn after the outbreak in 2016.
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South Lanarkshire council is attempting to have cheese produced by the manufacturer declared unfit for human consumption and destroyed.
Mrs Cairns, 38, told a civil hearing at Hamilton sheriff court that there was conflicting guidance about the need to test for the bacteria and she had been advised that it was not necessary.
She said: “South Lanarkshire council and Food Standards Scotland said I should have been testing for it and I am obviously testing for it now. I accept in hindsight it might have been sensible to have tested for it every six months but I’m not really quite sure how that would have helped. In retrospect it’s quite easy to look at things differently.”
Mrs Cairns also said that since the outbreak the company had changed the labelling of its raw-milk cheeses to include warnings that they were not safe to eat for children, pregnant women and the elderly.
Hugh Pennington, an E. coli expert, was asked at the hearing if he could rule out the possibility that poor hygiene at the premises was to blame.
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He said: “It’s highly unlikely it would have come from the milkers unless they have been infected. The general principle is that it comes from the animals not the humans.
“Not washing the hands may be responsible for spreading it but it wouldn’t be the source of the organism. You can never rule it out but the chances of it are very low based on what I have seen and read about the business.”
Professor Pennington acknowledged that he had not interviewed any of the employees as part of his investigation and had not seen Errington’s cheesemaking process in action. The microbiologist earlier said tests that linked Errington to the outbreak were unsound and that results produced on samples of products made by the company were “biologically implausible”.
He added that he had seen no evidence that cheeses produced by the company contained levels of E. coli that were a risk to human health.
The test results produced for the local authority by a laboratory in Edinburgh found the same strain of E. coli in two different types of cheeses made from the milk of two sets of animals.
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In a report written after the outbreak Professor Pennington described the evidence upon which the council relied as “unsafe”, “unsound” and “based on incorrect assertions”.
Errington was prohibited from selling its products by Food Standards Scotland and they were removed from the market in September 2016.
Officials are still considering whether to hold a fatal accident inquiry.
The court has previously been told that Errington suffered a £515,000 drop in sales after being linked to the food poisoning outbreak, while production of cheese fell from 50 tonnes to 20 tonnes.
The hearing, before Sheriff Robert Weir, continues.