The northern prefecture authorized, on Friday, the partial resumption of production in the Buitoni pizza factory in Caudry, in the North. At the heart of a serious health scandal, the Nestlé group’s production unit had been closed for nine months.
On the other hand, the line producing raw dough pizzas from the Fraîch’Up range will remain shut down. These products are suspected of having caused the death of two children and the poisoning of dozens of others by the bacterium Escherichia coli, at the beginning of the year.
Kidney failure in children
Public Health France (SPF) and the Fraud Prevention Department (DGCCRF) were alerted in February 2021 by an upsurge in cases of kidney failure in children, linked to contamination by Escherichia coli.
On March 18, Nestlé had recalled its pizzas and closed the two production lines and, on April 1, the prefecture had banned all activity there, the health authorities having established a link between the consumption of Fraîch’Up pizzas and several serious cases of contamination with E. coli.
“This restart is the result of a process of several months, in consultation with the authorities, to meet detailed specifications on the security of our supplies, our products and on a plan to modernize the plant” , reacted Nestlé to AFP.
Judicial information open mid-May
After searches in Caudry and at the headquarters of Nestlé in the Hauts-de-Seine, a judicial investigation was opened in mid-May, in particular for involuntary homicide against one person and involuntary injuries concerning 14 others.
According to internal analyzes carried out by the company, “the most probable hypothesis” is that “of contamination of the flour by the bacterium E. coli STEC”, of the same type as that found in the pizzas originally contamination.
In October, the president of Nestlé, Paul Bulcke, said he wanted to go “to the bottom” of the question to understand what happened at the Caudry factory.