Embattled French dairy chief breaks silence over salmonella
scareParis, Jan 14 (AFP) The chief executive of France'sLactalis group today vowed compensation for victims ofsalmonella-tainted baby milk as he revealed that recalls werenow under way in 83 countries.
Giving his first interview in nearly 20 years, EmmanuelBesnier who heads the family-controlled company, told theJournal du Dimanche newspaper that the recall involved morethan 12 million packages of Picot, Milumel, Celia and otherbrands of powdered baby milk.
"We are going to draw the lessons from this crisis andset out an even stricter hygiene framework, in collaborationwith the authorities," he said.
Asked why he had not publicly addressed parents' concernsas worries about the outbreak intensified, Besnier said: "It'strue, by nature I'm not very forthcoming.""In a crisis like this, we act first, and perhaps Ididn't take the necessary time to explain things."A total of 37 babies have fallen ill in France, healthauthorities said late Friday, along with a case in Spain and asuspected case in Greece, but Besnier said no new cases hadbeen reported since December 8, a week after the recall wasannounced.
"The case in Spain goes back to October," he added,referring to the two cases outside France reported Friday bythe Eurosurveillance medical journal.
Besnier's interview included two of the first publicphotographs of the secretive leader in years, at the Lactalisheadquarters in Laval, western France.
It came after finance minister Bruno Le Maire summonedBesnier to a meeting over the crisis on Friday, in which thechief executive agreed to pull from store and pharmacy shelvesall products from the Craon factory where the outbreak wasfound, instead of those dating back to February.
But Besnier did not appear with Le Maire at a pressconference after the meeting, despite calls by severalgovernment officials for him to face the public.
Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against the group byfamilies who say their children got salmonella poisoning afterdrinking powdered milk made by the company.
But Besnier, 47, denied claims by an association ofvictims' families that Lactalis had lied about the dates andnumber of stocks affected by the salmonella outbreak.
"This is false. I don't know what this claim is basedon," he said.
"At no point was there any intention of hiding things."Besnier defended, however, not informing the authoritiesthat internal tests had discovered salmonella on a broom andon the tiles of a dehydration tower at the Craon factory inAugust and November last year.
"For us, these 'environment' tests are an alert to makesure we keep the bacteria far from the product," he said,adding that authorities would have been alerted only ifbacteria were found in the powdered milk.
Created in 1933 by Besnier's grandfather, Lactalis hasbecome an industry behemoth with annual sales of some 17billion euros (USD 20.6 billion), making it the world'sthird-largest dairy group, behind Danone and Nestle.
The salmonella scare has cast a harsh spotlight on anexecutive and a company little known to the public, despiteemploying 15,000 people in France, where milk and cheese areproudly considered part of the country's heritage.
Analysts say the crisis could dent the company'sreputation among anxious parents worldwide.
"This recall may undermine consumer trust in milk formulabrands produced using milk from French farms in the emergingmarkets affected by the recall, which includes China," saidRaphael Moreau, a senior analyst at Euromonitor. (AFP)KIS.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.