Dairy owner claims Bhisho witch-hunt over food poisoning

A KING William’s Town dairy that supplied a number of schools with sour milk was last week ordered to close.

Innesfree Agriculture and Dairy was identified as a supplier of sour milk to a number of schools in the area where more than a thousand pupils from 12 schools fell ill after eating sour milk and pap.

The dairy was forced to close after Buffalo City health services found it to be in contravention of regulations relating to dairy products which prohibit the sale of raw milk and raw sour milk for human consumption.

Innesfree was ordered on Friday to stop selling dairy products with immediate effect and dispose of any raw milk or raw sour milk.

Innesfree owner Sherene Fourie accused the provincial government of a witch-hunt and said she was being targeted unfairly.

Fourie said most of the schools where pupils fell ill were not on the list of schools supplied by her dairy.

The six schools are Schornville Primary, Athenkosi Primary, Jali Public School, Qhugqwala Junior Secondary, and an unidentified school in Ginsberg.

Pupils from all six have been treated for food poisoning.

Fourie said she had not received any information regarding tests conducted on samples of sour milk.

Officials had also not contacted her.

She had only learnt through reading a newspaper yesterday that the sour milk Innesfree supplied was blamed.

With the business now only selling animal feed, Fourie said she was losing money. The business has a staff of 10.

Fourie said health inspectors were wrong to point fingers at her because schools and individual buyers fetched milk from her shop using their own containers.

“Did they check if the [schools’] containers were sterilised, or whether the food they cook at school was prepared properly?”

Fourie said some schools bought milk from her and stored it in their own tanks.

She queried whether those tanks were sterilised.

No dairy in the Eastern Cape is authorised to sell raw milk.

Fourie claimed that hundreds of dairies in the province were selling raw milk.

“Am I the only one who is shut down, or are they planning to shut down other businesses as well?”

Last week, 1 056 pupils from 11 schools were treated for diarrhoea in three hospitals after eating sour milk and pap.

Requests for comment from provincial health spokesman Siyanada Manana were unsuccessful yesterday.