Facility

Lactalis — Craon Infant Formula Factory (Craon, Pays de la Loire, France)

Lactalis's Craon facility in Pays de la Loire, France — the site of the 2017-2018 Salmonella Agona infant formula contamination crisis. The Craon factory (producing Picot and Milumel infant formula brands) was identified in December 2017 as the source of Salmonella contamination in infant formula distributed to 35+ countries. The recall was the largest infant formula recall in history — involving more than 12 million boxes of formula. French investigators subsequently established that Salmonella had been detected at the Craon facility as early as 2005 (a renovation created a persistent environmental contamination site in building infrastructure). Lactalis's internal records showed awareness of contamination risk long before the 2017 outbreak. Criminal charges were filed in France; the CEO was questioned by French authorities. The episode demonstrated that infant formula — a product with no acceptable risk threshold given its role as the sole nutrition source for vulnerable infants — can harbor contamination for years in factory infrastructure before causing a crisis.