A SCOTTISH farm in my constituency had the dubious honour of being the source of the world’s first major milk-borne epidemic of Escherichia coli O157 in the mid-1990s. Current thinking is that this particularly nasty form of food poisoning can be spread by contact with animal faeces (Â鶹´«Ã½, 21 September 2002, p 11). As the current season of pop festivals, countryside holidays and rallies is upon us, visitors and farm animals clearly ought to be kept apart. I asked health ministers what the government was doing about this.
Hazel Blears, the public health minister, replied that the Department…
