8 months after the scandal, the pain is still present. In March 2022, Kelig, a 2.5-year-old child with laughing eyes, lost his life after consuming a piece of frozen pizza from the Fraîch’Up range marketed by the Buitoni brand.
This Thursday, October 27, in a report broadcast as part of the Special Envoy program on France 2, Ludivine and Théo Soavi, the parents of the child, agreed to speak for the first time in front of a camera.
One bite is enough to take Kelig’s life. His mother says that the young boy had tasted “a little bit” of the pizza on his mother’s plate. “It was the first time we bought that,” she explains to our colleagues.
Only the next day the child has violent diarrhea and his condition deteriorates rapidly. If the first diagnosis is gastroenteritis, the doctors change their minds later, after the boy has had convulsions. They then lean more towards a hemolytic and uremic syndrome (HUS) and the little one is hospitalized in intensive care. This syndrome causes vital organ failure and kills Kelig the next day.
A month later, Ludivine and Théo learn from the National Public Health Agency that the little boy had been contaminated with E. coli bacteria by eating the Buitoni pizza. “We are in France, we are in 2022, reacts Théo Soavi. We do not imagine that we can sell, buy, we, lambda consumers, products which are fatal”, regrets his mother.
The Special Envoy team was able to meet former employees of the Caudry factory and one of the journalists was also able to infiltrate another of them jointly owned by Lactalis and Nestlé. Here are the discoveries they made… And they are far from reassuring.
