Despite visiting the infected farm on a number of occasions, finding Salmonella and seeing an unusual amount of dead chickens, Bavarian health authorities took no action, leading to widespread illness and multiple deaths across Europe last summer, Sputnik reported.

An outbreak of Salmonella which led to hundreds of people falling ill across Europe last summer, and was linked to several deaths, has been traced back to contaminated eggs from a farm in Bavaria, German media has revealed.

The farm is owned by the Bayern Ei company, one of Germany’s largest egg producers which operates four chicken factories, where hens lay some one million eggs a day.

At the farm in question, in the southern region of Lower Bavaria, where hundreds of chickens were being found dead each day, company bosses initially told employees the death rate was due to chickens dying from heat.

According to the investigation carried out by reporters from Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung and Bayerischen Rundfunk, the Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authorities knew about the presence of Salmonella at the farm, having found evidence of the infection in two separate investigations.

However, the authorities turned a blind eye and took no action to take products from the farm off the market, since “the responsible customer” is aware that “eggshells are not sterile,” and should wash their hands after handling an egg.