The Welsh Assembly Government risks allowing
another E Coli crisis due to a lack of funding, according to the
mother a five-year-old boy who died in an outbreak in 2005.
The Government has failed to protect enough
money to learn the lessons of a public enquiry, said Sharon Mills,
whose son Mason caught the food poisoning bug when he ate a school
dinner. Although £2.3 million has been spent on holding the
Pennington Inquiry, she said the Government had not taken the lead
in implementing its findings.
AMs on the Health, Wellbeing and Local
Government Committee will hear evidence from Professor Hugh
Pennington, who led the inquiry into the Scottish E Coli outbreak
of 1996.
Ms Mills, writing to the committee, said money
was put aside in Scotland to pay for improvements in food hygiene
at local councils, but this commitment was not matched in
Wales.
"This is too great a risk and does not
guarantee an effective and consistent plan for the benefit of
Wales," she said. "The Welsh Assembly Government is not doing all
it can to protect its people."
She said that four years after Mason died:
"Every single day I still recall every detail of his passing with
agonising clarity."
Contaminated meat led to 157 people, mostly
children, falling ill when E Coli O157 struck 44 schools in
the South Wales valleys. The butcher who supplied the meat, William
Tudor, was jailed for a year in September 2007 after admitting
placing unsafe food on the market.