Plan B Forum

A mother and daughter who used milk from cows that had tested positive for bovine TB to make organic ice cream have been fined.



Sarah Talbot-Ponsonby, 75, and Fredrica Allen, 43, admitted a series of breaches of food safety regulations relating to Helsett Farm in Cornwall. Helsett Farm organic ice cream is sold at shops such as Harrods and Selfridges according to the farm's website. Magistrates at Bodmin fined each woman £1,670 and made each pay £3,750 costs.

The charges related to separate incidents of a failure to discard raw milk from cows who had tested positive for bovine TB and the sale of cow's raw drinking milk without a licence. Barry White, prosecuting on behalf of the Food Standards Agency and Cornwall Council, told the court Mrs Allen allowed milk from cows who tested positive for bovine TB to go into "the bulk tank" which was then used for making ice cream.

Talbot-Ponsonby then "failed to get those products back from the human food chain" once the "mistake" was realised. The court heard the 300-acre Helsett Farm, near Boscastle, with a dairy herd of about 70, had never been registered to sell raw cow's milk. Mr White said: "Years and years ago when everybody drank unpasteurised milk thousands of people used to die every year."

In mitigation the court heard the offences represented a series of errors that had been "disastrous" for the family. Allen pleaded guilty to three counts of breaching food safety regulations and one breach of food hygiene regulations. Talbot-Ponsonby pleaded guilty to two breaches of food safety regulations and one breach of food hygiene regulations.

bovine TB

Scooter wrote:I get so fucking tired of the raw milk cheerleaders continually attempting to justify their attempts to circumvent the law and put people's lives in jeopardy as a result. Their zealotry approaches that of the anti-vaxxers.

There is a reason why food safety regulations, and in particular requirements for pasteurization, exist, and these two would-be assassins are Exhibit A.