Edwina Currie, the former MP for South Derbyshire, has once again weighed in on the topic of egg safety - more than 20 years after her outspoken comments on salmonella landed in her hot water.
Her latest comments come after the Food Standards Agency declared that eggs bearing a 'lion mark' are safe to eat, even then raw.
Mrs Currie, who was a junior Conservative health minister at the time, caused a major scare in 1988 after she declared: "Most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella."
The statement caused a dramatic collapse in the sale of eggs, as salmonella bacteria can cause food poisoning. This warning was deemed as overstating the truth and Mrs Currie resigned from her ministerial post in December 1988.
Now, Food Standards Agency says that any egg baring the symbolic lion mark which is printed in red ink is perfectly safe to be eaten whether cooked or raw.
Heather Hancock, from the Food Standards Agency said: "We are now saying if there is a British Lion egg, you're safe to do that. The risk of salmonella is now so low you needn't worry.
"And that's true whether you're a fit healthy adult, or whether you're pregnant or elderly or young. It's only people on strictly medically supervised diets who need to avoid those eggs."
Speaking on BBC Radio Derby today, Wednesday, October 11, Mrs Currie said that she still does not regret what she said in 1988.
She said: "I knew at the time that we had a very serious problem and we had a lot of people being taken to hospital. We had about 500 cases a week of people being so ill that they were taken to hospital and had samples taken.
"They had blood poisoning, they were being put onto kidney dialysis machines and we were losing somebody every week. There were about 60 people who died that year, so what would you do? Do you hide your head and pretend it isn't happening? That wasn't what I thought I could do."
Mrs Currie was the MP for South Derbyshire between June 1983 and April 1997, and was questioned on whether she regretted her choice of wording at the time.
She replied: "It hit the industry very hard. The choice I was making was between protecting bad producers, whose hygiene methods were not up to scratch at all, or looking after people, the human beings and as the public health minister I was responsible for the people.
"I'm now here to say that if you buy eggs with a lion brand on them, then you are doing okay. I think this should have happened back in about 2006 or 2007. It’s taken ten years for the food safety people to be satisfied which seems a bit excessive.
"The only advice is that it doesn't apply to severely compromised individuals; people who have just had kidney transplants for example, who have to have a specially advised diet anyway. But for everybody else, it’s fine."
Following her resignation in 1988, Mrs Currie never shied away from the headlines, becoming the first Conservative MP to appear on BBC panel show, How I Got News for You in 1991, then only a year later during the 1992 General Election campaign poured a glass of orange juice over Labour's Peter Snape.
Mrs Currie is the author of six novels and has appeared on reality TV shows including Strictly Come Dancing and I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.
