Testing ability queried

Peter McClure.

Dairy giant Fonterra is calling for government laboratories to be better equipped to identify bugs in food, after finding E.coli bacteria in its fresh cream.

The company recalled up to 8700 small bottles of Anchor and Pams fresh cream on January 13 after routine testing found E.coli, a bacteria that in its most virulent form can cause deadly stomach illness. The recall came just four months after the Government AgResearch lab wrongly cited botulism in milk powder.

Through another Government lab, Environmental Science and Research, Fonterra has ordered samples sent to labs in Denmark and Australia to identify E.Coli - but the company says scientists are still a month away from identifying it.

Fonterra Brands managing director Peter McClure told the Herald on Sunday the delay called into question New Zealand's testing capability. The company, New Zealand's biggest, sent "a lot" of lab testing work to ESR, but had been forced on this occasion to go further afield. "Should New Zealand have better (testing) capability? We need to contemplate that. It is a question I am about to raise," he said.

Suspicion in the E.coli contamination has fallen on a process pump in its Takinini factory failing to effectively flush cleaning fluid through the system.

Meanwhile, French food and baby formula giant Danone is suing Fonterra for $500million in damages in the false botulism scare. Fonterra had promised to conduct an extra level of testing for at least one major client, and the Herald on Sunday believes that client to be Danone.

According to an independent report, Fonterra failed to conduct any sulphite-reducing clostridial spore tests on its whey protein concentrate (WPC80), as required in the contract. Fonterra's WPC80 was the ingredient at the centre of the botulism scare, manufactured at Fonterra's Hautapu plant in Waikato many months before.

Fonterra refused to say if Danone was the customer concerned, but said: "Fonterra accepted it would do SRC testing on a final blended ingredient product (which included WPC80) as part of contractual arrangements with one customer. There was no requirement to test the WPC80 separately."