Primaloire on Trial for Unintentional Injuries Caused by Metam-sodium Use on Lamb’s Lettuce

The affair caused the prohibition of the use of metam-sodium for the producers of lamb’s lettuce in Nantes. This Monday, May 22 at 2 p.m., the Angers criminal court judges the Nantes company Primaloire and one of its employees, for unintentional injuries. He is accused of having, in the fall of 2018, made a mistake in the use of the pesticide, intoxicating several dozen people around Brain-sur-l’Authion, east of Angers.

Widely used for lamb’s lettuce crops in particular, metam-sodium is a fungicide, herbicide and insecticide, used to disinfect soil. A month after this case, in November 2018, the product has been banned by ANSES
(the national health security agency), as it is considered dangerous for health and the environment.

More than 70 victims

More than four years later, more than 70 victims are awaiting the outcome of this trial. At the end of September 2018, several high school students from Loire-Authion, east of Angers, complained of headaches, respiratory discomfort, eye irritation. A few days later, the same symptoms appeared near Brain-sur-l’Authion, for around sixty employees from four horticultural companies. Then, eleven inhabitants of Mazé-Milon, 13km away, also claim to suffer from these ailments. In total, around forty people are sent to the Angers University Hospital. More than 70 complain
.

Primaloire on the bench of the defendants

One of the employees of the Nantes company Primaloire will be on the bench of the defendants, judged because he would not have not respecting the spreading rules, when using metam sodium. Indeed, the fungicide must be applied to very wet soil, then watered again, to fix it to the soil and prevent it from dispersing in the air. Today, the product is banned.

Several questions arise in this trial. Why did the product have such consequences? Is it a lack of rigor? Insufficient national and departmental supervision, as denounced by France Nature Environnement?

Among the 70 victims, only a few have filed as civil parties in the trial. Will also be present: the four horticultural companies concerned, the municipality of Brain-sur-l’Authion, a union of employees and two environmental associations (including the FNE of Anjou).