Nestlé asks to partially reopen its Buitoni manufacturing unit in November

Nestlé desires to restart in November, topic to the inexperienced mild from the authorities, one of many two manufacturing strains of its Caudry manufacturing unit, from which got here the Buitoni pizzas contaminated by the E. coli bacterium, linked to the demise of two youngsters and to poisoning.

This well being scandal broke out final March, and the hyperlink with the manufacturing unit was rapidly established.

Judicial data was opened in mid-Might, specifically for involuntary murder towards an individual, involuntary accidents regarding 14 folks, inserting in the marketplace of a product harmful to well being and endangering others. . Younger youngsters have suffered kidney harm known as hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).

A protocol

Nestlé France instructed AFP on Thursday that it had put in place “a restart protocol” for the manufacturing unit together with the dismantling and cleansing of manufacturing strains, together with flour silos.

The group desires to reopen solely one of many two manufacturing strains, the one which produced pizzas of different ranges than the ‘Fraîch’Up’ on the origin of the tragedy. The manufacturing unit has been closed since March 18, and the prefect signed a closure order on April 1.

Contacted by AFP, the Nord prefecture indicated that the prefectural decree was at this stage “not repealed”, and won’t be “till the anomalies noticed (…) should not utterly corrected”. . “The effectiveness of the actions undertaken” by the operator “might be carefully verified by the State providers”, she specifies.

In response to Nestlé, the road the place the Fraîch’Up have been produced will stay suspended ’till additional discover’, which is able to end in job cuts.

“Given the prospects for gross sales in a sector in issue and the suspension till additional discover of the Fraîch’Up pizza manufacturing line, it’s essential to adapt the workforce of the manufacturing unit”, defined a porter. phrase of Nestlé.

Out of a workforce of 182 full-time equivalents earlier than the March recall procedures, round 80 positions might be affected by a ‘voluntary’ departure plan.

The group’s social companions have been knowledgeable of the scenario on Thursday morning, and the employees within the afternoon. Nestlé France has provided Caudry workers early retirement for many who are sufficiently old, or inside mobility throughout the group, or different help measures for ‘exterior initiatives’.

In entrance of the manufacturing unit, on the finish of the assembly, the staff solicited by AFP didn’t need to communicate.

Contaminated flour

Nestlé additionally revealed a number of outcomes of inside analyzes carried out by the corporate itself. These affirm, in line with the group, ‘probably the most possible speculation of contamination of the flour by the bacterium E.coli STEC’, of the identical kind as that which was discovered within the pizzas on the origin of the contaminations .

These analyzes have been carried out in Might and June on flour delivered to the manufacturing unit in March 2022. This flour was saved in a number of of the manufacturing unit’s silos, which had not been cleaned since 2015 in line with workers quoted in a France Inter survey on Saturday.

What Nestlé doesn’t dispute. When silos include a dry product, they ‘ought to solely be cleaned when altering substances’, its spokesperson replied on Thursday.

Contamination from flour delivered by a provider was one of many hypotheses talked about by the boss of Nestlé France in an interview with Le Figaro in July and by the staff quoted by France Inter. However different doable causes have been put ahead, reminiscent of cleansing and hygiene situations, after a number of warnings up to now and accusatory testimonies from workers.

Nestlé France, which claims to have taken greater than 2,000 samples, claims to have detected no micro organism on the manufacturing strains and their setting (partitions, grids, and many others.), however did detect the micro organism on frozen pizzas produced between October 2021 and February 16, 2022.

Well being authority inspections for a number of years had reported ‘the presence of rodents’ and the ‘lack of upkeep and cleansing of producing, storage and transit areas’ within the manufacturing unit. In 2012, the presence of ‘mildew’ and ‘rust’ was famous, in 2020 that of ‘cobwebs’ on the ceiling of the bakery, ‘greasy and oily’ materials and even dust ‘amassed’ within the duct air flow.

In March 2022, when the inspectors returned there ‘as a part of the well being alert’, they famous ‘a really marked deterioration in hygiene situations’ in comparison with September 2020 and March 2021, in line with one of many stories of the Fraud.

/ATS