What famous blue cheese caused problems in a Lanarkshire town in the 1980's and why?

Answer 1

Lanarkshire Blue cheese was in the 1980's the first sheep milk blue cheese produced in the British Isles for several hundred years. A scare arose because of the appearance in some European cheeses of a variety of Listeria (a bacteria) which had the potential to be particularly harmful to pregnant women and other who might be immuno suppressed. The Lanarkshire Environmental Health Service seized some £50,000 worth of Lanark Blue cheese from the maker claiming it to be contaminated with Listeria and unfit for human consumption. It later turned out, after a long legal and scientific battle, that the Lanarkshire EH Service had got their science wrong and the strain of Listeria found in Lanark Blue was to be found in many cheeses and had never been shown to cause any ill effects in humans.