The article doesnt contain any detail, so if anyone else is curious:
Cereulide is a toxin produced by some strains of Bacillus cereus, a common environmental bacterium found in soil, dust, and raw agricultural materials.
Cereulide acts on cells’ mitochondria and can cause rapid-onset symptoms like vomiting, stomach cramps, and diarrhea.
During manufacturing, raw ingredients used in baby formula such as oils (e.g., arachidonic acid, or ARA oil) or dry powders can be contaminated with spores of B. cereus or pre-formed cereulide.
Because spores and the toxin survive processing, they must be prevented by testing ingredients before inclusion.
In the threads I see people focusing on the origin of the contaminated material. I think that misses the point that you have to deal with this by testing at the point where the ingredients are assembled into a final product, because it can’t be removed from whatever feed stock creates the individual ingredients.
Of course, ideally the manufacturer of the component ingredient also does the testing but in manufacturing you never trust your suppliers- you need your own testing engineers if you are putting your brand on the product and taking responsibility for it.
Long running story already.
What the report doesn't say is that it looks like that affected product batches were manufactured or manufactured with ingredients coming from China.
It is a shame for Nestle to have to import ingredients from China for such simple products anyway. It's the greed at topest level.
This is a bit slandering, no? Cargill is a key supplier of arachidonic acid, and let’s say that’s where Nestlé gets it.
Are they at fault for Cargill’s sourcing of Chinese ARA/DHA? Okay, they are, let’s say. But why are you buying virtually any product? It’s your fault that lots of manufacturing is done in China. Go make your own algae oil to put in your baby formula and we’ll discuss the pricing.
What’s more interesting about all this: a) product recalls work fast; b) the baby formula industry is too dependent on a handful of suppliers of key ingredients; c) our brand of formula doesn’t use AHA so we appear to be safe for now.
The point of "greed" here is when you are starting to cut corners to make more money to the point of impacting the quality/safety/honesty of your product. Thinking that no one would notice.
You could buy whatever random Chinese milk powder brand. But Nestle is advertising itself on the upmost quality and care for you kids. Especially the brand impacted.
It's like going to a restaurant selling the best homemade luxury food and you go to the kitchen and you find that they cook expired supermarket frozen food because they greedily were thinking that it would be more profitable.
So you're insinuating that importing from China automatically means poor quality? I don't believe that's true, especially for large companies who are able to manage the supply chain (as, AIUI, doing business with China famously requires).
I think you need to address that to validate your original comment. Otherwise there's no justification for your claim.
> greed is normal and expected in a free market economy
OK, technically true, just like saying "water flows downhill" when someone's house is flooding. It isn't productive, the fact is well known.
"The system incentivizes this" and "this is good/bad" are two entirely different statements. One doesn't address the other [1], until you make a moral judgement about the outcome.
> You say this as if it's some deviant behaviour that needs correcting.
Is it moral and correct for infants to be fed contaminated baby formula? The mismatch between what is and what ought to be is deviance.
I try to boycott them as much as possible. I thought the boycott nestle thing was just a weird Reddit thing until actually reading about this company. It’s pretty sickening.
God thanks, there is already a large withdrawal action happening, initiated a few days ago: Im always wondering why it takes them so long to find out and inform the public?
ok then, just try and report ANYTHING directly to ANY mega corp
and lets say you happen to finnaly get through to a human at that company, and they then try to push it up, while you are listening, and hear them bieng completly unable to do anything from within the company from there lowly level.
It is an almost absolute guarantee that the
top levels will not be required to be involved in this in any way, as this will be relegated to trumpeters and sin eaters, hired for just such occasions by there staff.
>Im always wondering why it takes them so long to find out and inform the public?
Problems with babies diets are hard to identify generally. Frankly I'm amazed this was identified with only 36 sick infants.
Consumers of baby formula are known for having a high baseline rate of spewing things out their holes and having a pretty high standard deviation on top of that rate. And of course the babies are getting older all this time and changing their diets and responses to things. So a large subset of parents are just gonna write it off as "I guess now that my baby is X months old this brand of formula gives him the shits/upsets their stomach." There's also likely confounding changes. And it's not like they can tell you "hey this tastes different than last week's". It's gonna take a while to ID that there's a problem and then actually correlate it to anything (consumption of a specific problem product in this case).
It's not like the kids are turning blue or some other "obviously not right" symptom. That'd be identified and root caused within the week of the first case.
More like giving formula for free to new mothers to begin with, and when they wouldn't produce their own (as there was no "demand") they would later need to buy more formula.
The article doesnt contain any detail, so if anyone else is curious:
Cereulide is a toxin produced by some strains of Bacillus cereus, a common environmental bacterium found in soil, dust, and raw agricultural materials.
Cereulide acts on cells’ mitochondria and can cause rapid-onset symptoms like vomiting, stomach cramps, and diarrhea.
During manufacturing, raw ingredients used in baby formula such as oils (e.g., arachidonic acid, or ARA oil) or dry powders can be contaminated with spores of B. cereus or pre-formed cereulide.
Because spores and the toxin survive processing, they must be prevented by testing ingredients before inclusion.
In the threads I see people focusing on the origin of the contaminated material. I think that misses the point that you have to deal with this by testing at the point where the ingredients are assembled into a final product, because it can’t be removed from whatever feed stock creates the individual ingredients.
Of course, ideally the manufacturer of the component ingredient also does the testing but in manufacturing you never trust your suppliers- you need your own testing engineers if you are putting your brand on the product and taking responsibility for it.
Long running story already. What the report doesn't say is that it looks like that affected product batches were manufactured or manufactured with ingredients coming from China.
It is a shame for Nestle to have to import ingredients from China for such simple products anyway. It's the greed at topest level.
This is a bit slandering, no? Cargill is a key supplier of arachidonic acid, and let’s say that’s where Nestlé gets it.
Are they at fault for Cargill’s sourcing of Chinese ARA/DHA? Okay, they are, let’s say. But why are you buying virtually any product? It’s your fault that lots of manufacturing is done in China. Go make your own algae oil to put in your baby formula and we’ll discuss the pricing.
What’s more interesting about all this: a) product recalls work fast; b) the baby formula industry is too dependent on a handful of suppliers of key ingredients; c) our brand of formula doesn’t use AHA so we appear to be safe for now.
> It's the greed at topest level.
You say this as if it's some deviant behaviour that needs correcting.
But greed is normal and expected in a free market economy. Suppliers are expected to seek to reduce their costs and maximise their profits.
The point of "greed" here is when you are starting to cut corners to make more money to the point of impacting the quality/safety/honesty of your product. Thinking that no one would notice.
You could buy whatever random Chinese milk powder brand. But Nestle is advertising itself on the upmost quality and care for you kids. Especially the brand impacted.
It's like going to a restaurant selling the best homemade luxury food and you go to the kitchen and you find that they cook expired supermarket frozen food because they greedily were thinking that it would be more profitable.
So you're insinuating that importing from China automatically means poor quality? I don't believe that's true, especially for large companies who are able to manage the supply chain (as, AIUI, doing business with China famously requires).
I think you need to address that to validate your original comment. Otherwise there's no justification for your claim.
> greed is normal and expected in a free market economy
OK, technically true, just like saying "water flows downhill" when someone's house is flooding. It isn't productive, the fact is well known.
"The system incentivizes this" and "this is good/bad" are two entirely different statements. One doesn't address the other [1], until you make a moral judgement about the outcome.
> You say this as if it's some deviant behaviour that needs correcting.
Is it moral and correct for infants to be fed contaminated baby formula? The mismatch between what is and what ought to be is deviance.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
> It isn't productive, the fact is well known.
I agree. My point is that the original comment was similarly unproductive.
It's not like any other country knows how to manufacture things. Outsourcing and greed rotted our economies from the core outwards.
I try to boycott them as much as possible. I thought the boycott nestle thing was just a weird Reddit thing until actually reading about this company. It’s pretty sickening.
What blew my mind was how most of the food industry is pretty much owned by about eight corporations.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/oxfam-us/www/static/media/files/Beh...
Chances are you're still buying Nestle. You can check here.
https://www.boycottbuddy.app
Chinese citizens routinely import baby formula from the West because they don't trust their own country's manufacturing standards.
Something to think about.
AFAIK this story started in France, and has been going on for a while already in multiple countries.
e.g. here is the recall in Flanders,Belgium,for 2026-01-05, so more than a month ago:
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2026/01/05/nestle-nan-babyvoedi...
Here is one English source about the deaths in France:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-nestl...
God thanks, there is already a large withdrawal action happening, initiated a few days ago: Im always wondering why it takes them so long to find out and inform the public?
ok then, just try and report ANYTHING directly to ANY mega corp and lets say you happen to finnaly get through to a human at that company, and they then try to push it up, while you are listening, and hear them bieng completly unable to do anything from within the company from there lowly level. It is an almost absolute guarantee that the top levels will not be required to be involved in this in any way, as this will be relegated to trumpeters and sin eaters, hired for just such occasions by there staff.
Where I leave we were informed about the scandal after the products had been replaced. Makes me wonder what the priorities are.
>Im always wondering why it takes them so long to find out and inform the public?
Problems with babies diets are hard to identify generally. Frankly I'm amazed this was identified with only 36 sick infants.
Consumers of baby formula are known for having a high baseline rate of spewing things out their holes and having a pretty high standard deviation on top of that rate. And of course the babies are getting older all this time and changing their diets and responses to things. So a large subset of parents are just gonna write it off as "I guess now that my baby is X months old this brand of formula gives him the shits/upsets their stomach." There's also likely confounding changes. And it's not like they can tell you "hey this tastes different than last week's". It's gonna take a while to ID that there's a problem and then actually correlate it to anything (consumption of a specific problem product in this case).
It's not like the kids are turning blue or some other "obviously not right" symptom. That'd be identified and root caused within the week of the first case.
Didn't this happen once before with nestle baby formula in Africa years/decades ago?
Seems to be happening more frequently than one would expect. A month ago a batch of nestle baby formula was recalled in Cyprus for the same reason https://en.politis.com.cy/social-lens/979647/nestle-expands-...
IIRC that was deceptive marketing. It was something like selling non-formula as formula, or selling formula as better for babies than breastmilk.
More like giving formula for free to new mothers to begin with, and when they wouldn't produce their own (as there was no "demand") they would later need to buy more formula.
a similar (?) scandal happened in China, for which 2 people faced execution, alongside some very lengthy prison sentences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
Not similar in terms of intent
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