Recent newspaper stories about a mouse leg being found by food inspectors in a Glasgow restaurant's beef curry, and another where an orange was crawling with maggots, are enough to make my stomach churn.

They also raise worrying questions, especially following last year's horsemeat-in-burgers scandal, about the level of checks on the food we eat.

The discoveries were made by Glasgow Scientific Services (GSS) in Springburn, whom I admit I'd never heard of. It turns out they are the largest public analyst body in the UK and are contracted by Glasgow City Council and 15 other local authorities to act on behalf of their environmental health officers if they request examination and analysis of samples taken from, for example, fast-food outlets, restaurants, butchers', delis and sandwich shops.

GSS is a member of the Association of Public Analysts, which has three other Scottish laboratories, in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh. These labs are not in charge of food safety; they provide information to those who are, and only when asked. Food hygiene, food fraud and mis-labelling are also tested by them, and GSS was also asked to examine samples for E.coli 0157 following an outbreak linked to burgers sold at Glasgow's Hydro in January, when 21 people were infected.

I'm told the first two anecdotes quoted above are quite old, but the E.coli outbreak is alarmingly recent. You do wonder how on earth these things can still happen.

Public analyst labs report their findings to the local authority environmental health officers who commissioned them. They in turn should report to the Food Standards Agency, which offers the local authority advice to co-ordinate a response to an incident; the FSA and the health board keep the Government informed. This is the accepted protocol. However, it seems it doesn't always work that way.

There has been no substantial public information about the E.coli outbreak at the Hydro since mid-February. I asked the environmental health department at Glasgow City Council for an update on who supplied the burgers and what was being done to prevent a recurrence. They said they'd been on-site to inspect the hygiene and cooking methods of the vendor but that the problem lay with the burgers supplied by a well-known food service provider (presumably they're now monitoring them more closely than before). I was advised to contact NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde for more, as it was handling the case. The health board responded by reiterating the statement on its website, saying: "Environmental health officers have worked closely with the vendors and will continue to liaise with them to ensure all appropriate food hygiene standards are being met."

So I tried FSA Scotland, which said the E.coli incident was in the hands of the council.

I find this lack of information alarming. The fact is that E.coli O157 is reported more frequently in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, with around 250 cases annually. Food poisoning from campylobacter, listeria and viruses is a significant cause of illness, and even death, in Scotland; it's estimated that 132,000 people suffer a food poisoning incident each year in Scotland; around 2330 people receive hospital treatment as a result; and around 50 people die of it. This is shocking, and exposes weaknesses in public food safety procedures.

This week a Government Bill to create a new food body, Food Standards Scotland, began its passage through parliament. It will replace the FSA and have a wider remit to allow it to be more proactive in the public health agenda with greater powers of enforcement. Its new powers will enable it to work with local authorities more effectively on environmental health issues, and monitor the nature of the work being undertaken by them.

The idea for an independent Scottish food standards operation was first mooted in 2010, when the Coalition Government took the decision, without consultation with Scotland, to transfer responsibility for nutrition, food labelling and standards in England from the FSA to Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). At the time Scottish public health minister Michael Matheson said the changes in England removed significant capacity in the FSA's functions for Scotland and needed to be addressed. The new FSS will come under his control. This is the first UK-wide national public body to form a breakaway operation independent of Westminster.

The FSS promises to be more consistent, responsive and accountable but it needs to be alert to the challenges of the global food chain, new pathogens borne of climate change, illegal practices and GM foods. Matheson said this week that the Bill includes measures to prevent a repeat of the horsemeat scandal, and the FSS, unlike the FSA, will have enforcement powers to seize food not up to food standards or labelling rules.

Less a case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted than harnessing the imperative to get the bit between our own teeth.