Since the end of February, France has experienced an upsurge in cases of kidney failure in children linked to contamination with E. coli, and two children have died since the beginning of the year.
The Nestlé group said on Thursday that tests carried out at its French site producing Buitoni pizzas, some of which were contaminated with E.coli, turned out to be negative and assured that the incriminating images broadcast in the press did not correspond to the “usual” state of the factory.
The company closed the two production lines located in Caudry, in the north of France, which manufacture frozen pizzas marketed mainly in the country. Nestlé had recalled on March 18 all Buitoni pizzas from the Fraîch’Up range after the identification of a possible link with E.coli contamination.
Since the end of February, France has experienced an upsurge in cases of kidney failure in children linked to contamination with E. coli, and two children have died since the beginning of the year. Some contaminations are linked to the consumption of Fraîch’Up pizzas, health authorities confirmed on Tuesday. Nestlé took 75 samples from the factory, “all negative”, Nestlé France’s general manager of communications, Pierre-Alexandre Teulié, told AFP. “The priority is to find the cause of the contamination,” he added. Some of the photos of a dirty production line, published in May 2021 on a website, Mr Mondialisation, indeed seem to have been taken within the factory, he acknowledged. But “what they show does not represent the normal, usual or acceptable state of the factory,” Teulié told AFP.
“Since then, the cleaning time has been reduced”
“If this corresponds to a reality”, it could only be specific situations, “after a breakdown” or “during the cleaning process”, he specified, stressing that unannounced checks carried out in September 2020 and March 2021 had not identified any deviation from the regulations. “It’s never dirty like that,” an employee told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The CGT union deplored for its part a reorganization of the factory in 2015 which, according to it, affected hygiene. “Since then, the cleaning time has been reduced, and carried out by less well-trained people. This has been denounced for years, at Nestlé as elsewhere”, underlined Maryse Treton, of the CGT agri-food federation.
Nestlé said the lines were deep cleaned for 5 hours after a maximum of 27 hours of production.