The apologies of the boss of Ferrero France Nicolas Neykov, in an interview with the newspaper Le Parisien / Today in France [article payant] published Friday, May 27, are “a communication operation” who “comes much too late”, critic on franceinfo master Jérémy Kalfon, lawyer for 14 families of victims of salmonella contamination due to the consumption of Kinder chocolates. For him there was “negligence and failures” from Ferrero.
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franceinfo: You have read the words, the excuses of the boss of Ferrero France. What do you think ?
Jeremy Kalfon: It is obviously a communication operation and it comes much too late. The scandal broke out at the beginning of April and it took until the end of May to hear the boss of Ferrero France explain himself to consumers. This waiting is unbearable. Moreover, the content is totally insufficient since the boss of Ferrero tells us in essence: ‘There were failures, of course, but there was no negligence.’
“This is the 2022 vintage of ‘responsible, but not guilty’.”
Me Jérémy Kalfon, lawyer for 14 families of victims of salmonella contaminationat franceinfo
Failures come from somewhere. There are two possibilities: either they come from negligence and this is obviously unacceptable, or they come from total incompetence of the Ferrero group and this is also unacceptable. When you are a multinational group which makes such a turnover, which has such means, which produces food for children (the average age of my clients is three years old), then you does not have an obligation of means, we have an obligation of result. And incompetence, as the boss of Ferrero seems to plead, is not a line of defense, it is negligence.
Did your customers read this interview, did they tell you about it?
My clients have read this interview. The words that come up are “stunned” and “disgusted”. We feel that initially, obviously, it arrives much too late. These are people who have tried to reach Ferrero for several days, weeks, even months since the children of some of my clients were infected in December, February, March, and had no response. Today you have a calibrated response with a very particular format in which there are words: ‘You will be compensated’, but there are no acts. There is nothing, we see nothing.
Does this issue of compensation matter to your clients?
In reality, this question does not count. What is extraordinary and what shows the motivation of my clients is that when they contacted me, no one spoke to me about compensation. Most, if not all, of the families who contacted me were motivated by Ferrero’s lack of response. They were motivated by the group’s flippancy before the scandal broke, in not recalling products and not doing what was necessary to stop the contaminations, and after the scandal broke, when the toll-free numbers did not didn’t answer, that the emails remained unanswered, and that the answers we gave them were unsatisfactory, even unworthy, since sometimes they were told: “Madam, sir, what idea of giving chocolates to 2-year-old children?”
“The interview with the CEO of Ferrero France has one goal: to try to restore the confidence of the group’s consumers.”
Jeremy Kalfonat franceinfo
And this is absolutely not a guarantee given to the victims of this affair.
Nicolas Neykov explains the origin of the contamination, the filter of a butter vat. He promises that the protocols will be reviewed in an external laboratory, which will carry out half of the health tests, including in the Normandy factory. Isn’t there something to reassure you
We already knew that salmonella came from a butter vat, it had been known for a long time already. On the other hand, what is interesting in what Mr. Neykov says is the failure of self-control. In these factories, the controls were 100% internal and now, 50% control will be done with an independent laboratory. This clearly shows that the control as it was designed and accepted could not work. We see it with Ferrero today but we also see it with other brands that are affected by other scandals. The fact that an outside body intervenes at the control stage and that the factory has been shut down are good things. We hope that the contamination will stop. Nevertheless, the 80 infected children have been infected and we cannot go back.
The boss of Ferrero France says that the English authorities established a statistical correspondence between the cases of salmonella and the consumption of surprise Kinder on April 2, and that Ferrero launched the recall of all its products in Great Britain and then in France from the the following day. What do you answer?
They were put with their backs to the wall by the British authorities. And once they established a statistical match, Ferrero had no choice but to recall the products. In fact, they had heard these echoes of salmonella contamination for a long time. They made the choice to let it flow, to save their economic interests, to save Easter and Christmas, and to wait until we really put their eyes in front of the holes to withdraw the products.