A 12-year-old girl has died in Northern France following lethal food poisoning likely caused by consuming contaminated meat. At least 18 other children have been infected, many of them needing hospital treatment, according to reports last week.
Having discounted the local drinking water as a vector for contaminants, local authorities are focused on two Saint-Quentin boucheries, south of Lille. Many of the victims are suffering from digestive system–based symptoms, with the deceased contracting hemolytic uremic syndrome which, according to Public Health France, is a
primarily renal complication of Escherichia coli (E. coli) infections … transmitted through food, a contaminated environment, or person-to-person transmission.
To date, four butchers’ shops and two supermarket departments in the Saint-Quentin metropolitan area have been closed. Food samples were taken away from these premises in an attempt to ascertain the source of the food poisoning outbreak.
For some observers, the authorities are obfuscating the nature of the businesses from where the toxins may have originated. Each is described as selling lamb and beef—but not pork—while as far back as June 13th, parents were being told not to eat merguez, a type of Maghrebi sausage, from the first two shops to be connected to the outbreak.
However, for some observers, including former MEP Jean-Yves Le Gallou, the Halal meat origins of the poisoning should at least be investigated. In a detailed post on X, formerly Twitter, he writes:
Poor French people are often forced to eat halal [with] health risks due to pollution of meat by intestinal germs …. And neither the European Parliament nor the National Assembly have managed to get a vote on the tracing of slaughter chains and the labelling of meat according to the method of slaughter.
The rise of halal trading, including of foodstuffs in France, has been linked to the growing soft power of the Muslim Brotherhood.
