PARIS, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- Trapped in the scandal of salmonella-tainted baby milk since December 2017, French dairy giant Lactalis has issued its first apology and admitted that their products might have also been contaminated with the bacteria for 10 years from 2006 to 2016.
In addition to at least 37 babies who fell ill in France and Spain last year due to contaminated milk produced by a Lactalis factory in Craon, northwest France, the Institut Pasteur, France's reference center for monitoring salmonella, said Thursday that another 25 babies were infected between 2006 and 2016.
Emmanuel Besnier, the company's chief executive officer, admitted on Thursday that the same bacteria were found at the factory in tests between the two outbreaks.
"We can't exclude the possibility that some babies drank contaminated milk during this period," he said.
"Thanks to a new technique that has been used at the Institut Pasteur since last year, we have been able to go back and test a hundred of isolated strains in infants infected with Agona salmonella," said Francois-Xavier Weill, director of the Institute's Salmonella Reference Center.
"It was discovered that 25 infants had been affected, between 2006 and 2016, with the same strain identified in 2005 and 2017," he told state-run France Info radio.
In Spain, another salmonella-infected infant case was detected at the Basurto University Hospital in Bilbao, taking the number of cases in the country this year to two, the Department of Health of the Basque regional government said in a statement on Saturday.
In January, French Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire said that Lactalis would extend a product recall to all baby food produced in its factory hit by the contamination scandal.
"Lactalis will take back every single box of baby dairy products manufactured in the site of Craon, regardless of the (production) date," the minister told a press conference following a meeting with Lactalis executives.
Le Maire fired harsh criticism against Lactalis before the press conference, calling it a "failing company."
"If there had been a little more responsibility from the Lactalis side, this situation would not have occurred," he said.
French investigators searched the headquarters of Lactalis in January as part of an investigation over the scandal that has triggered an international recall, state-run radio reported.
Gendarmes and officers from the National Investigation Service of the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) also raided four other sites of the French company.
"As we have indicated, Lactalis puts itself at the disposal of the justice and will bring all the elements necessary for the good progress of the investigation," Michel Nalet, Lactalis spokesman was quoted as saying by local media. ' The salmonella scare has forced the family-owned dairy group, one of the world's leading dairies, to recall more than 12 million tins of baby milk.
Salmonella symptoms include diarrhoea, fever, vomiting and abdominal pain, and are extremely dangerous for infants.
(Xinhua reporters Sonia and Gan Chun contributed to this story.)
