A dirty production line, machines covered in grease. These shocking images of a Buitoni pizza manufacturing workshop were broadcast in May 2021 on the Mr Mondialisation website. The person who took these photos (end of 2020) was a temporary worker for eighteen months at the Caudry factory (Hauts-de-France). “Special Envoy” reached him by telephone. In this excerpt, he claims to have orally alerted management. Without subsequently raising many “pressure in relation to cleaning”…
“The mealworm on the carpet says a lot… The grease on the machines is several years old, clearly. The floor is in a deplorable state… (…) What happens behind the curtain is not clean at all…”
The former temporary worker who photographed a production workshop at the Caudry factory in 2020in “Special Envoy”
According to him, the hygiene of the employees also left something to be desired: “There are many who do not wash their hands.” After an alert (“human fecal matter found in product samples”), the improvement would not have lasted, he says: “The screw had to be tightened a bit, so it was done, and after three weeks it was back ‘to normal’ [c’est-à-dire comme avant]”. According to some scientists, one gram of fecal matter can contain up to 1 billion Escherichia coli – and 500 would be enough to make a child sick…
According to an employee, the publication of the photos did not change anything
This lack of staff hygiene has not yet been confirmed to “Special Envoy” by other employees. Contacted, the management of Nestlé did not respond on this point. The group’s only reaction to the publication of the photos dates from May 14, 2021, to “refute these accusations” in a local newspaper.
The questionable sanitary conditions within the Caudry factory (mold, ingredients on the ground) are confirmed by another anonymous account. And according to this witness, employed for more than twenty years on the site, the publication of the photos would not have changed the situation.
“We talked about it in meetings over and over again: for these photos, is Nestlé going to do something? And we were always told no. That was Nestlé’s watchword: we let sink, it will settle.”
An employee of the Caudry plantto “Special Envoy”
Excerpt from “Pizzas Buitoni: chain negligence?”, a report to see in “Special Envoy” on October 27, 2022.
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