E-Coli outbreak in Scotland Butcher Shop
Twenty-one people died in 1996 after eating contaminated meat supplied by a butcher's shop in Wishaw, Lanarkshire, Scotland which is considered as the world's worst recorded outbreak of E. coli food poisoning.
Several of the people who died had attended an annual church lunch in Wishaw and eaten meat provided by the local butcher Mr. John Barr. Among the others who died were residents of a local nursing home and the deaths continued until June 1997.
An enquiry concluded that deaths of six people could have been prevented if Mr. Barr had responded "fully and honestly" with Environmental Health officers, by admitting he supplied meat to Scotmid supermarkets, six deaths could have been avoided. Listing five key failures by Mr. Barr, the report described the deaths of the elderly victims as "undignified and often very painful". It found there was inadequate training of the staff, a failure to use temperature probes for cooking raw meat, a failure to draw up cleaning schedules, a failure to separate processes for raw and cooked meat, and to provide separate knives and equipment at each stage of processing. "Mr. Barr liked to keep a clean shop and maintained a clean shop. What he failed to do was maintain a safe shop . . . " the report stated.
However, the tragedy was compounded by Mr. Barr's "lack of frankness" about the true nature of his premises, which led health officers to conclude he was exempt from regulations relating to the supply of cooked meat. When the question of Mr. Barr's registration under 1994 regulations arose in 1995, he told officials he supplied meat to a number of other butchers but failed to mention his supply to wholesalers. The report concluded it could not rule out the possibility that the food poisoning would not have occurred if Mr. Barr had been registered.