Water firms blamed for poisoned oysters

BRITAIN’S water companies have been accused of contaminating oysters and putting restaurant diners at risk by dumping raw sewage into rivers and the sea.


The number of people suffering food poisoning from raw oysters has risen dramatically, with 230 customers becoming ill in just a three-month period, according to new figures.

The Sunday Times revealed last week how six water companies have fought off an attempt by the Environment Agency to impose regulations on 4,200 overflow pipes that pump out raw sewage.

The scandal of contaminated oysters follows an outbreak of norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhoea, at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, last year. Chefs at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, which has two Michelin stars, were so concerned that they took oysters off the menu for almost a year.

Britain’s oyster industry is worth about £30m a year, with the main fisheries in the Thames estuary and on the Essex coast, in the Solent off the Isle of Wight and in the River Fal in Cornwall.

Producers fear their livelihoods are being jeopardised by food poisoning incidents linked to oysters. They point out that norovirus, which contaminates the oysters, originates in humans and so the source must be sewage being discharged into rivers and the sea.

“Some Third World countries use better technology than we do to treat sewage,” said David Jarrad, assistant director of the Shellfish Association of Great Britain. “We are as much the victims in this as the consumer.”

The Food Standards Agency has written to councils this year warning of an increase in suspected norovirus outbreaks linked to oysters. Its figures for December 2009 to February 2010 show that 32 restaurants and hotels were hit by outbreaks, with 230 people falling ill.

Norovirus is killed at high temperatures but oysters are typically eaten raw. In February last year Blumenthal was forced temporarily to close the Fat Duck, which has three Michelin stars, after 529 diners fell ill over a seven-week period. A Health Protection Agency report found sewage in oysters was most likely to blame. “Oysters harvested from sewage-contaminated waters will feed on the faecal residues,” it said.

Graham Larkin, operations manager at Colchester Oyster Fishery, which supplied the Fat Duck, said the vast majority of oysters were safe to eat but action needed to be taken.

“Fisheries are being affected by this all over the country. We want to see the water cleaned up,” Larkin said.

He now conducts rigorous tests for norovirus on oysters from the River Colne in Essex. Anglian Water has sewage treatment works on the river, which flows through Colchester, and overflow pipes which can discharge sewage during very wet weather.

Gary Jones, executive head chef at Blanc’s Le Manoir in Oxfordshire, said the restaurant now only served oysters that had been through a purification process and had been tested for norovirus. “We have to be confident that what we put on the menu is not going to harm anyone,” he said.

Jones said there was “not a shadow of a doubt” that oyster contamination was caused by sewage and the water companies should be held to account over discharges. “What we are doing to the seas is horrific. We should be taking this more seriously,” he said.

Water companies are allowed to dump raw sewage into rivers and the sea during wet weather to stop it backing up into homes, but oyster producers want to see more investment to limit the amount that is discharged.

Anglian Water said there was no proven link between its sewage discharges and contaminated oysters. Water UK, which represents water companies, said the industry had spent billions of pounds to improve the sewer system and as a result water quality in rivers and bathing areas had significantly improved.

Jon Ungoed-Thomas
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7114086.ece