"There is a reckoning to be done": Family sues state after children were poisoned by E. coli bacteria

A family has decided to sue the French government after their two children were poisoned by the Escherichia coli (or E. coli) bacteria in the Aisne region. Like them, a total of 32 people, mostly children, were poisoned after eating meat from butcher shops in the town of Saint-Quentin.

Today, the children of this family are "doing well physically, but not so well psychologically," their lawyer Emmanuel Ludot assured BFMTV this Thursday, July 10. "But we escaped tragedy, and fortunately, they survived."

They spent a little over a week in care after their poisoning. The family, along with their lawyer, decided to sue the state.

"A bacterium like this never happens by chance; there are always multifactorial causes," explains Emmanuel Ludot. "The state has not explained the checks it should have carried out."

The lawyer denounces the lack of "traceability of this meat" in butcher shops "that have never been, or only rarely, inspected." "Apparently, there may never have been any checks."

"There are no random inspections, no checking of the condition of the refrigeration systems or the conditions in which this meat is stored."

All this in one of the departments "which is certainly one of the poorest in France." "If there aren't enough checks, it's because there aren't enough resources, because the prefecture doesn't have enough," the family's lawyer summarizes.

Emmanuel Ludot therefore assures us that poisoning of such magnitude is not surprising and "had to happen". "If you add up the lack of capacity (of people working in butcher shops, editor's note), of checks, a poor department and the lack of resources, that gives 30 cases of E.coli contamination and one death ."

He now hopes the state can explain itself. "There is accountability." He also expects compensation for his clients and has requested the appointment of a medical expert to examine the two poisoned children and determine "the extent of the damage."

A judicial investigation is still underway into charges of "involuntary manslaughter", "involuntary injury", "endangerment and deception aggravated by endangering human health".