We’re in New Caledonia for Amy to do some French professoring stuff, with the Calgary-Carolina hockey game on in the background on a sports channel from France.
I went for a walk along the ocean this morning, sans Ted, which is the extent of my French.
While I’m surrounded by the beauty of this Pacific island, the Lactalis mess in France continues a downslide into parody (except for the sick kids and their families).
According to Reuters, France welcomed dairy group Lactalis’ pledge to compensate victims of a Salmonella contamination in its baby milk on Sunday, but said a judicial investigation to determine who was responsible would continue.
Lactalis Chief Executive Emmanuel Besnier told the weekly Journal du Dimanche his family company, one of the world’s biggest dairies, would “pay damages to every family which has suffered a prejudice.”
Is prejudice French for barfing?
Salmonella infections can be life-threatening and the families of three dozen children who have fallen sick in France as a result of the contaminated baby milk have announced a raft of lawsuits.
Besnier’s promise came two days after Lactalis widened a product recall to cover all infant formula made at its Craon plan, regardless of the manufacture date, in a bid to contain the fallout from a health scare that risks damaging France’s strategic agribusiness in overseas markets.
“Paying compensation is good, but money cannot buy everything,” government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said in an interview on BFM TV.
The health scare intensified last week after France’s biggest retailers including Carrefour, Auchan and Leclerc admitted products recalled in December had still found their way onto shelves.
“It is the job of the investigation to determine where failings occurred and who is to blame,” Griveaux said, adding that “responsibilities were shared.”
Implementing the global recall will be challenging. Privately owned Lactalis, one of the world’s biggest dairies, exports its baby food products to 83 countries across Europe, Africa and Asia.
The recall involves some 12 million tins of baby milk.
“It’s not easy to evaluate the number of items that need to be returned because we don’t know what’s been consumed already,” Besnier said in a rare newspaper interview published on Sunday.
Friday’s recall was the third in a month and Lactalis has come under fire for its clumsy response. Besnier also told the French weekly that the company had acted as quickly and efficiently as possible and denied slowing the process to curb losses.
Besnier has also been criticized for failing to speak out publicly during the salmonella scare.
While his family are France’s 11th wealthiest, according to a 2017 ranking by Challenges magazine, the dairy tycoon has long shunned the public limelight and schmoozing with politicians.
His workers nickname him the “invisible man.”
“We’re a discreet business. In this region there is a mentality of ‘work first, speak later,” he said. But he acknowledged lessons had been learned during the past few weeks.
Lactalis has become an industry giant, with annual sales of 17 billion euros ($20.73 billion) and 18,900 employees across some 40 countries.