A new complaint has been filed in Perpignan against Buitoni by a woman who was ill after consuming a pizza from a range different from that already under investigation, according to the complainant’s lawyer on Thursday.
“This is a mother who consumed a pizza from the Bella Napoli range on March 27 and was hospitalized on the 29th for six days”, indicated Me Pierre Debuisson, specifying that “the results of the analyzes revealed the presence of the bacterium Escherichia coli”, as for the previous contaminations linked to the Fraîch’Up range, and of another bacterium, Shigella.
A month-long investigation
At the beginning of April, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced that it had opened an investigation, in particular for injuries and involuntary homicides, after several dozen serious cases of contamination linked to the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) have been identified in recent weeks almost everywhere in the Hexagon. Two children died and dozens of others could have lifelong consequences.
On the 13th of the same month a search took place in the Buitoni factory in Caudry in the north of France. This was the production site for Fraich’Up frozen pizzas, considered by the health authorities to be the source of several serious cases of contamination of children by the E. coli bacterium.
Serious shortcomings in a northern factory
These inspections “highlighted a degraded level of control of food hygiene”, specified the decree, pointing in particular to “the presence of rodents and the absence of means of protection against the entry of pests and the fight against pests that are effective and suitable for a food business”, as well as the “lack of maintenance and cleaning of manufacturing, storage and passage areas”.
These anomalies “constitute a significant source of microbiological, physical or chemical contamination of foodstuffs handled in the establishment, which therefore present or are likely to present a danger to the health of consumers”, according to the decree.