Sark dairy farmer and butter producer Phil Perree was devastated about the recall, which had followed routine product testing by Environmental Health to ensure food products are safe to be eaten.

Any presence of E.coli makes food unsafe to eat.

‘We use unpasteurised milk to make our butter which is the traditional way we’ve always done it. Pasteurising obviously kills off the extra bacteria. Perhaps the problem has been caused by this heat or because it’s been stored for too long,’ he said.

‘I’m not sure what’s going to happen at this stage. At the moment we have put a halt to everything, I’m not sure whether we will even carry on after this – hopefully everything will get sorted. I’m very sorry to all our customers and very thankful for all the support we’ve had from them over the years.’

He said he produced roughly 100lbs of butter per week.