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Artisans throughout the UK are following with horror the unfolding case of Dunsyre Blue. Food Standards Scotland issued a recall notice on a batch of this celebrated raw milk cheese when Health Protection Scotland linked it to an outbreak of e.coli 0157 that affected 19 people in July.

Humphrey Errington, whose family makes the cheese, reports that neither the agency’s tests, nor the company’s own independent tests of the implicated batch, have found any evidence of contamination. “Of the 19 ill people, seven may have eaten blue cheese (not necessarily Dunsyre Blue); some ate no blue cheese at all,” he says.

This is Errington’s second run-in with public health authorities. In 1995, he won his costly court case against Clydesdale Council, which alleged his trailblazing ewe’s milk cheese, Lanark Blue, was unfit for human consumption. Errington suspects the HPS/FSS position stems from its prejudice against raw milk cheese.

Is he right? I asked FSS for substantive evidence supporting its case against Dunsyre Blue and received a nebulously bureaucratic response: “It would not be appropriate to respond in more detail as investigations have not yet concluded. A formal outbreak report will be produced by the Incident Management Team after the investigation is declared over.” So I asked for a likely timescale. Weeks? Months? I await an answer, but the waiting is harder for the Erringtons, who are losing money in cancelled orders.

FSS did inform me categorically that raw milk cheeses bear “increased risk of complications from food poisoning”. Yet the US Food and Drug Administration recently concluded, after testing 1,606 samples, that pathogen levels in raw milk cheese are “relatively low” (less than 1%) and “similar to the contamination rates in many other foods”.

If the police held a suspect in custody it would not be good enough for them to merely state in court: “We think he did it.” A judge would demand supporting evidence. So why should the ‘food police’ be able to act with similar impunity? They are rightly equipped with weapons that let them intervene to protect public health, but this power must be accompanied by accountability and transparency.

Joanna Blythman is a journalist and author of Swallow This

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