An artisan cheesemaker has been banned from ever making cheese again after salmonella, E.coli and listeria was found in her mozzarella.

Health inspectors discovered Frances Wood’s dairy in West Cranmore, Somerset, in a filthy state with ‘high-risk’ moldy cheese laid on dirty racks with taps rusting away.

A judge branded the 70-year-old’s cheese-making operation ‘shoddy’ and ‘amateurish’ after hearing that her products contained salmonella, E.coli and the listeria bug – which kills one-third of people infected.

Wood would often travel to London’s Camden Market to sell her artisan mozzarella which she also sold to local pizza restaurants.

She ran Alham Wood Cheeses at Higher Alham Farm, where she kept buffalo and made mozzarella cheese from their milk.

The buffalo have been on the farm since 1997, with a 200-strong herd kept there.

Mendip District Council inspected her dairy several times and saw no change in the disgusting conditions.

And when they viewed her stall at Camden Market, they found the same unhygienic products.

The local authority said they tried to work with Wood to improve her cheese-making, but took legal action when it became clear she had not made any improvements to hygiene conditions at her dairy.

She was served with formal notices at the end of November 2014 and was then prosecuted for two offences under food safety and hygiene regulations.

Wood pleaded guilty to the charges and was fined a total of £787 and made to pay £6,000 in prosecution costs.

But a district judge also took the rare step of imposing a Hygiene Prohibition Notice, which bans Wood from ‘participating in the management of any cheese production or processing business in the future’.

He called Wood’s business ‘a shoddy operation’ which was ‘rather amateurish’.