a former Buitoni employee denounces deplorable sanitary conditions in the Caudry factory

On the morning of Thursday March 31, an anonymous witness, who claims to be a former employee of the Buitoni factory in Caudry (Nord), made revelations at RMC. “When you see mushrooms on the wall, you can already see that it’s not going well. When there are worms on the carpets where the pizzas pass, (…), when the paint is peeling off the metal bars, it doesn’t do not go”says the source. “It was scraps of food that remained in certain places for several days, several weeks”he adds, also mentioning “cigarette butts” in the sauce catch basins.

The management of the factory, contacted in the morning, refutes any accusation, and recalls that unannounced health checks take place regularly in the factory. For the Institut Pasteur, the contamination could also have occurred before the arrival of the raw materials in the factory. “In the flour, a priori, the bacteria can survive, but it is stressed. (…) On the other hand, in the later stages, as soon as we add liquid, nutrients, the bacteria will be able to multiply”explains Doctor François-Xavier Weill, director of the National Reference Center for E.Coli. Public Health France is actively focusing on the investigation, and indicates that the epidemic ofE.coli seems to be on a scale unmatched in France.