Hundreds of livelihoods depend on cockle-picking

Cocklers say Food Standards Agency tests suggesting diarrhetic shellfish poisoning was present are unreliable.

Beds were closed after tests, in the Thames Estuary, The Wash and the Burry Inlet on the South Wales coast.

And the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee said the FSA had "inflicted very real and unnecessary damage" on the shellfish industry.

Its damning report criticises the FSA's slowness to investigate alternative explanations for the positive tests, listen to the industry's suggestions, or accept their methodology could be at fault.

The tests involve injecting mice with a highly-concentrated mix of cockles and other chemicals.

The shellfish and cockle industries are neither big nor powerful, but should not have been treated in the way they have been by the Food Standards Agency Austin Mitchell MP

But cocklers say the human equivalent of this would mean someone eating 1.33 times their own body weight of cockles in one sitting.

Positive results only began to appear after the contract for laboratory testing for toxins in English waters was transferred from the Fisheries Research Service in Aberdeen to the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science in Weymouth.

The industry is convinced CEFAS methodology is to blame.

Austin Mitchell MP, chairman of the sub-committee that investigated the closures, said: "The shellfish and cockle industries are neither big nor powerful, but should not have been treated in the way they have been by the Food Standards Agency."

The FSA said in a statement: "Our approach has been and will continue to be to take precautionary action to protect public health in the face of uncertainty.

"The agency has worked to minimise the impact of this action on the cockle industry while still protecting public health."