Oil residue suspected in dairy contamination

Oil residue is believed to have contaminated a batch of local dairy products in Jersey.

On Thursday, Jersey Dairy's green milk and butter products were recalled after it said a chemical unfit for human consumption was detected.

The company said small batches of its 1l (1.76 pints) 2.5% fat reduced milk with a use by date of 23 March, and 250g (8.8oz) unsalted butter with a best before of 8 June was tainted. The Environmental and Consumer Protection Team (ECP) said it had launched an investigation into the contamination.

Jersey Dairy's managing director Eamon Fenlon said the team believed the contamination was an "oil residue" which "managed to get into a system" on one of its farms.

He said: "The residue, it was left on a part of the system... it was very, very small - it's one part in a million.

"We and public health understand that it wouldn't cause any illness but our consumers are our priority, food safety is our priority - we don't want any risk so we've decided to recall the products concerned."

Jersey Dairy said it had contacted all resellers and alerted people on its social media to the contaminated batch.

Fenlon said islanders who may have consumed the contaminated products should not worry and to return the items where they bought them from.

He said: "Public health have told us based on their research that this should not impact the health of anybody.

"I advise consumers to bring the product back to the shop where they bought it and we've arranged with the shops to give refunds and we'll refund the shops."

ECP said its officers had been deployed on Friday to visit retailers and make sure all affected products had been removed from sale and "returned to Jersey Dairy for destruction".

It said: "Jersey Dairy has a long-established practice of disposing of contaminated products promptly and in full compliance with regulations.

"We will be following up directly to review their procedures and begin to investigate how this error occurred."

The department added the "risk to public health is considered to be low" based on current information.

Dandy Coffee Shop said it was left with only three cartons of milk after it had removed the contaminated cartons from its fridge.

Barista Ellysia Spears said: "All of our milk that we had, maybe 30 cartons of milk, we gave them back to Jersey Dairy.

"It was all fine in the end, we did have to go to the shops and buy some more milk - we maybe had like three cartons of milk left and we had a pre-order which needed to be ready for 9am, Friday morning is really busy."

The Pantry By Kismet Cabana said none of its dishes or pantry products had been affected as it ran "a kitchen with full ingredient traceability".

"Every product that comes through our doors is logged by supplier, farm, batch and date, so we can track things right back to the source."

Bean around the World also said its drinks were ok and that it had "plenty of unaffected milk".

Follow BBC Jersey on X and Facebook. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk.