The FSA has said it has no plans to clamp down on the sale of raw milk products, despite a spate of food safety incidents linked to the product over the past eight months.
More than 50 cases of campylobacter were linked to raw drinking milk (RDM) sold by the Low Sizergh Barn farm in Cumbria last month, in the latest in a series of incidents connected to the sale of unpasteurised dairy products.
It followed a listeria-linked recall of cheese made by the Loch Arthur Creamery in Dumfries on 15 December, and an e.coli outbreak linked to Lanarkshire-based Errington Cheese during the summer, which claimed the life of a child and is still the subject of a dispute between the cheesemaker and Food Standards Scotland.
Despite this, an FSA spokesman said this week it was currently “not planning to reopen a review into RDM consumption”.
The FSA board decided to keep existing rules on raw milk in July 2015, despite calls at the time for sales to be widened, due to the “absence of a quantitative risk assessment and limitations in the evidence base”.
As a result, RDM sales in England and Wales are restricted to vending machines, farm shops and farmers’ markets.
“Sales of RDM can resume once there have been three consecutive sets of negative test results, each a week apart,” the FSA spokesman said.
Low Sizergh Barn owner Richard Park, insisted “raw milk is safe”, and said he hoped the farm’s products would be back on sale by the end of January.
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