Rennes (AFP)

The French food group Danone asked parents on Wednesday to find larvae in cans of Gallia infant milk to send them to them for "more in-depth analyzes", while RTL radio reported on Thursday evening of five families concerned.

"We need to recover these boxes to conduct more in-depth analyzes," Florent Lalanne, director of medical affairs for Danone, the company that makes the baby milk concerned, told AFP on Friday.

"This situation is very surprising for us because it is something exceptional. We absolutely want to understand how these larvae could have arrived on the product," he added, asking the affected families to contact the company. via a telephone number (0800-202-202) or the laboratory-gallia.fr website.

So far, two cases have been brought to the attention of the company, those of families living in Puy-de-Dôme and Landes. These have communicated to Danone the lot number of the boxes concerned, both produced in Wexford, Ireland, according to the group.

"And there are three cases that we have known and discovered through the press," adds Florent Lalanne.

Wednesday, the police station of Saint-Malo had confirmed information of the daily newspaper Ouest France according to which a Breton couple deposited there complaint against Gallia: their child of three months had regurgitated a parasitic worm of several centimeters.

"A complaint has been made to the Saint-Malo police station," confirmed the Saint-Malo public prosecutor's office on Friday, which will have to decide whether or not to follow up on this complaint. "Investigations are underway, there will be no additional communication at the moment. It is taken care of to do the necessary."

And Thursday evening, RTL radio reported the testimony of a mother living in the Var and cited the case of another family based in the Bouches-du-Rhône.

"In the production chain, all of the milk powder is never in contact with air and is conditioned under a protective atmosphere where the percentage of oxygen, of the order of 2%, is very low, which makes the survival of an organism living in our milk impossible, "observed Florent Lalanne.

He raised the possibility that the contamination had taken place "outside the production site, in transport, storage, the distribution circuit". "Our wish is to understand what could explain this presence of larvae," he insisted.

© 2020 AFP