Nestlé remains silent on child deaths from contaminated pizzas in France

In the Buitoni factory in Caudry (northern France) after the production lines were shut down. CHRISTOPHE LEFEBVRE / VOIX DU NORD / MAXPPP

The families are crushed. An 8-year-old boy died in Paris after suffering from severe hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). A 12-year-old girl is in a vegetative state and no longer reacts to stimuli from her surroundings. A newborn baby died eight hours after birth. A 7-year-old child had multiple cardiac arrests. Others came close to the worst, like one family whose three children, aged 2, 9 and 10, were hospitalized between the end of January and the beginning of February and are still suffering from the consequences.

What these tragedies have in common is that they occurred a few days after the children ate Buitoni's Fraîch'Up pizzas produced in the same Nestlé factory. Analyses have revealed that the pizzas were contaminated by Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria.

A preliminary investigation was opened on March 22 by the Public Health Unit of the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office for "endangerment of others, involuntary injury and involuntary manslaughter." On Wednesday April 13, gendarmes from l’Office central de lutte contre les atteintes à l’environnement (Central Office for the Fight against Environmental and Public Health Violations) conducted searches at Nestlé's headquarters in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine), the Caudry factory (Nord) and several other sites.

The French public health agency's investigation with the Pasteur Institute confirmed the link between the HUS cluster and the Buitoni pizza. They identified 53 confirmed cases as of April 13 – including two dead children – and it was investigating 26 others. Lawyer Pierre Debuisson, who is defending 40 of the victims' families, considered the reaction time too slow: "The first hospitalizations occurred in January and the plant's production lines were not closed until March 18. They let the products get sold out and other children were contaminated."

For its part, the Nestlé Group has battened down the hatches. Officially, the Swiss giant no longer wishes to comment due to the ongoing legal proceedings. "This is a stage in the investigation. We continue to cooperate fully with the authorities to ensure that the investigation proceeds smoothly. We are not in a position to share more information at this time. We want to reaffirm that the safety and quality of our products are our top priorities," the group stated.

The Caudry plant stopped production on March 18, the same day that a press release was sent out announcing the pizza recall. The company said it made the decision "after being informed of the presence of E. coli bacteria in the dough of a frozen pizza from the Fraîch'Up range." Only the Buitoni brand appears in this press release, which makes no mention of its owner, Nestlé. The Italian company Buitoni, which built the Caudry site in 1982, no longer exists. It was bought in 1988 by the Swiss group, which eventually only kept the frozen pizza production.

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