Indicted in February in the 2017 contaminated milk case, Lactalis was targeted by a large number of charges. According to the first elements of the investigation, the group that sells President camemberts, mozzarella Galbani or even Leerdammer, is being prosecuted for three offences.
In memory, several dozen infants had been affected at the end of 2017 in France from salmonellosis, potentially very serious food poisoning in the weakest. The link had been made with their consumption of a product for children, mainly of the Milumel or Picot brands, from the factory in Craon (Mayenne). Lactalis has so far counted 37 child victims.
The bacterium present in the factory between 2005 and 2017
According to the first elements of the investigation, the infections first earned the company an indictment for involuntary injuries to at least 28 children, by “manifestly deliberate violation of a particular obligation of caution or safety”. The company headed by Emmanuel Besnier had mentioned as the cause of the contamination “work carried out during the 1st half of 2017”.
But the Craon site had already suffered a previous contamination with salmonella in 2005, affecting 146 infants, when it did not yet belong to Lactalis. The Institut Pasteur then concluded that the bacterium present in Craon had survived between 2005 and 2017, which a report from October 2022 seemed to corroborate, evoking a “probable (…) resident strain in one or more points of the site ” .
For the expert authors of the document, restricting contamination to a single episodic event “is certainly abusive”. They favor “a gradual deterioration in the control of hygiene”. This document points to a “lack of vigilance or even clairvoyance” by the company “vis-à-vis the repeated negative signals which alerted to a loss of manufacturing safety” and “action/reaction plans that are difficult to read and do not which did not allow the restoration of this control”.
The judges followed them: they criticize the group for not having taken “the necessary measures to identify the causes” and “correct” the hygiene problems detected in 2017.
Aggravated deception
They therefore implicate Lactalis for aggravated deception, the second offense, in particular on “the risks inherent in the use” of certain milk powders manufactured in Craon. Because for the judges, third offence, Lactalis did “not immediately initiate the procedures for the withdrawal” of batches manufactured in Craon despite “reasons to think that these were detrimental to health”.
The withdrawal process had been chaotic: on December 2, 2017, the health authorities had recalled twelve references of infant milk manufactured in the Mayenne factory, then Bercy had published on December 10 a list of more than 600 recalled batches, prohibited from consumption and export. After several weeks of crisis, the group, renowned for its culture of secrecy, had withdrawn in mid-January 2018 all of its infant milk produced in Craon. Production had been suspended for more than six months.
Before the judges in February, the legal director Fabrice Collier assured that Lactalis was “fully aware of the damage suffered by the children and their parents”, for “most (…) compensated”. “We wish, just as much as these victims, that the truth be revealed about the causes and origins” of this contamination, added the group.
But Lactalis also criticized in interrogation two of the main incriminating exhibits, reports from 2018 and 2019 from the Repression of Fraud (DGCCRF), considering them devoid of “explanations” from the “technicians in question”.