• Responsibility: The judge imposes a bond of five million to the owners of Magrudis, the company that caused the listeriosis outbreak
  • Health: The Board deactivates the Listeria alert two months later with three dead, seven abortions and 204 affected
  • Symposium: Experts endorse the health management of the listeriosis crisis and the "effectiveness" of the treatment of those affected
  • Investigation.The Magrudis manager ordered the destruction of company documents in the midst of Listeria crisis

The meat that was sold by the Sevillian company Magrudis and that caused the deadly outbreak of listeriosis last summer was contaminated to unimaginable limits by the bacteria that caused the disease. Specifically, and according to the expert report commissioned by the court investigating the case, the presence of the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes was almost 150,000 times higher than allowed by health regulations and considered tolerable for human consumption.

Depending on the sample of meat analyzed, listeria contamination exceeded 3,700 to 149,900 times the maximum tolerable, according to the conclusions of the expert to which the Court of Instruction 10 of Seville has resorted, which asked to indicate and determine whether the presence of the bacteria was within the normal parameters or if it exceeded them and, in addition, what repercussions its consumption could have.

The expert takes into account when establishing its conclusions the current regulations established by regulation 2073/2005.

That with regard to meat samples, because it has also analyzed the samples taken at the factory that the Magrudis company had at the Industrial Estate El Pino in Seville. In this case, the results, says the expert report known on Friday, do not violate the regulations "lacking a legal limit for it." But, he adds, the data obtained is overwhelming in terms of the high probability that the surfaces analyzed could contaminate any food that was deposited on them.

Likewise, the expert report highlights the "lack of hygiene" or, at least, efficiency in the tasks of cleaning and disinfection in machinery, tools and surfaces and how cross contamination (of food from surfaces) could serve as "niche" for an authentic colony of Listeria monocytogenes to grow.

In view of these results, the expert points out, the consumption of the meat mecha of La Mechá with levels of contamination such as those found "are sufficient" to cause damage to people who can range from gastroenteritis to meningitis or encephalitis.

The judge imposed on February 27 a bond of five million euros to seven of those investigated in the case, including the owner of Magrudis, José Antonio Marín Ponce, and his son Sandro, who have been in provisional prison since last September .

The others are another son and other relatives of Marín.

The Office of the Public Prosecutor of Seville requested a bail of one million euros, while the Facua consumer association, as a private prosecutor, claimed a million and a half, as did the defenses of nine injured parties.

The Junta de Andalucía, meanwhile, estimated the health cost of the outbreak at 3,428,663.02 euros.

The judge attributes to the detainees a crime against public health in their form of food fraud, four homicides for imprudence and six crimes of abortion for imprudence, in addition to crimes of injuries due to imprudence "whose exact number is still to be determined."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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