A PLAN to license butchers' shops but not the rest of the food industry in the wake of the E-coli outbreak has been condemned by Glasgow's director of environmental services.
Mr Brian Kelly was speaking as an adviser to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities' protective services forum in Stirling yesterday as councillors considered their response to the Government's consultation document after the case in central Scotland in which 21 people died.
Mr Kelly emphasised he was not against licensing, but to target butchers who were but a part of a wide-ranging food industry was ''nonsense''. He told the forum he would prefer hazard analysis across the entire spectrum of the food industry.
The forum strengthened the Cosla response to insist butchers should have to employ separate staffs for the handling of raw and ready-to-eat products, despite warnings that it would put some butchers out of business.
Members also recommended that butchers' delivery vans would have to be licensed, disallowing vans carrying both raw and ready-to-eat products.
Forum chairwoman, Councillor Julia Sturrock, of Dundee City Council, declared: ''We stand to be responsible for quite frightening events. Let's just go for more safety and let others decide if it's commercially viable.''
Explaining his position on licensing, Mr Kelly said afterwards: ''It's daft to license butchers in isolation. Category A risk premises include butchers, caterers, restaurants, kitchens in hospitals, and homes for the elderly.
''Butchers and wholesale butchers are only a part of the target. They supply the catering industry. The same contaminants which are on the red meat in the butcher's shop go into all these other outlets.
''In the recent outbreak in Lanarkshire, the meat was supplied by a butcher but then it went to another caterer who actually handled it and cooked the steak pies.''
Meanwhile, Mr Kelly's department had just completed seizure of more than 100 kg of cheese of a type that had been linked to a case of E-coli in Somerset.
After an emergency order by the Scottish Office, the cheese was seized in two stores in the city's West End, which have not been publicly identified.
Earier this month, a12-year-old boy was treated in a Bristol hospital for an illness caused by the E-coli 0157 bacterium which appears to be associated with the consumption of Wedmore.
The Scottish Office has advised people not to eat the Caerphilly-type cheese, containing chives; Ducketts Caerphilly; and Smoked Ducketts Caerphilly.
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