Placenta shop closed down over possible 'health violations'
Store sold mothers their placentas in either a smoothie or powdered form
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Your support makes all the difference.A smoothie shop that created drinks from mothers’ raw placentas has been closed down over potential health violations.
Kathryn Beale’s Swindon store was shut down after Swindon Magistrates Court granted a hygiene emergency prohibition order last week.
Ms Beale, 41, who took mothers’ placentas and put them into smoothies for £35, also sold powdered placenta capsules and umbilical cord keepsakes, all made in her kitchen.
Concerns were raised over the possibility of staphylococcus aureus – which can cause vomiting or diarrhoea – despite the shop having no recorded cases of any illnesses.
The mother-of-two will be unable to re-open her business until she can prove its safety.
District Judge Simon Cooper, commented that chances of contamination were “exceptionally high”.
“I have never quite appreciated the range and ingenuity of the human mind which will place cases such as this before me,” he added in court.
But Ms Beale defended her practise, telling This Is Wiltshire: “The organisms transferred to the surface of the placenta are protective, not hazardous, and will prevent the growth of staphylococcus aureus because of competition, the low pH due to lactic acid and to other antibacterial compounds produced”.
She added: “It is not passed around or sold on the internet. I meet with each mum in person when she books my services and she receives only her own placenta.”
Eating the placenta has become the option du jour in recent weeks with advocates claiming it gives new mothers a boost of energy post childbirth.
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