IN MY VIEW

I WAS critical at the beginning of this outbreak because of the slow way information was released.

At the start, we just had rather general statements coming out.

Now, Food Standards Scotland has put out a lot of scientific information which I suspect is not particularly helpful to the public.

I can understand it because I’m a microbiologist and I specialise in this particular bug and all the subtleties.

But at the moment we still haven’t got the full story. If there is going to be any legal action then there could be a clampdown on any information coming out that could prejudice a court case.

The details of the child who died have emerged slowly. We don’t know the full facts and we may have to wait until either there’s a court case or a fatal accident inquiry.

Some of the results released by FSS are preliminary and are still obviously a work in progress and that’s fair enough. It’s as much as they can do, I suppose, at this stage.

The Dunsyre Blue cheese has been targeted as the likely source of the bug in the outbreak in July on the basis that quite a lot of people had eaten it and fallen ill.

That cheese was withdrawn but that hasn’t been enough to satisfy FSS and they are targeting the business as a whole.

The only conclusion you can take is that they think all the products from the company are potentially dangerous so they’ve stopped them being sold. It’s as simple as that.