Two former executives of the company SEB risk four years in prison, including three farms, in the case of chopped steaks contaminated with the bacterium E. coli.
They may have to serve four years in prison, three of which are firm. Guy Lamorlette and Laurent Appéré are accused of “involuntary injuries by manifestly deliberate violation of a safety obligation” and “deception on goods causing danger”. Before the Criminal Court of Douai (North), the prosecutor requested a heavy sentence. The two former executives of SEB supplied steaks contaminated with the bacteria E. coli to the hard-discount chain Lidl.
18 people were poisoned by these contaminated products in June 2011. Children for the most part, according to the regional health agency Nord-Pas-de-Calais. One of them, Nolan, now 8 years old, was particularly badly injured. He now suffers from serious neurological lesions which limit his motor skills to 10%, as well as his intellectual development.
Nolan is not the only victim to bear the consequences of the contamination. Others have developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a rare condition in France, and often linked to diet, and now suffer from kidney failure.
A heavy responsibility
It is the lack of health control that is worth this requisition to the two former leaders. “To give to eat a staple food to millions of French people, it was a heavy responsibility, launched the prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Miot, quoted by The Parisian. We hoped that an organization, vigilance, controls, if not increased, at least minimum, would be observed when the risks are perfectly known ”.
Guy Lamorlette and Laurent Appéré would have changed the sanitary control standards when they were in post, without informing the veterinary services. Instead of systematically checking all batches, both meat and carcasses, they decided to carry out random checks. A unilateral relaxation of the rules, which had allowed the bacteria E. coli 0157H7, the strain responsible for the contamination, to slip through the cracks.
.
