One of the biggest food scandals in history told in Health Survey

What if we told you that hygiene routines common today in butcher shops, bakeries and restaurants were not commonplace 70 years ago ? If nowadays it is almost impossible to ignore a slew of sanitary measures in the sales and industrial sectors, things were very different in post-war France. For a century, the Halles de Paris, located in the first arrondissement of the capital, was the main market. We found there, according to INA archives dating from 1954, “fruits and vegetables, fish and meat. Everything that tomorrow will feed the markets. Everything that tomorrow will be prepared in the millions of kitchens in the capital’s homes”. Crates of perishable foodstuffs were transported on carts, buyers were seen touching and feeling the vegetables with their bare hands to find the best ones. Everything was stacked on the shelves. Quarters of veal were carried on the shoulder by the butchers, in the middle of the passers-by. Without gloves, without blouse… A health chaos which constitutes one of the first contemporary food scandals.

A report on food practices and contamination

Tuesday January 24, 2023 at 9 p.m., France 5 broadcasts Health survey, Food poisoning: threats on our plates. As the title suggests, the report covers everything related to food processing, production, storage, transport, shelving, preparation, but also errors in the chain. They can be the source of many bacterial contaminations in humans, which can lead to death. “Frozen pizzas contaminated with E. coli bacteria, chocolate eggs suspected of being infected with salmonella, cheeses with listeria”… In this report, we also look back on the biggest scandals of recent years, often linked to protocols not respected in manufacturing plants. But long before that, 1950, the Halles market, nicknamed “the belly of Paris”was already making headlines for its rudimentary hygiene.

“PSeveral thousand French people die each year from food poisoning.

Supporting archive images, Health survey looks back at the abject conditions of conservation of this market, its displacement, then its final demolition in 1973. It was not so long ago… “1959, the famous program Five Columns on the front page denounces the dilapidated and dirty Les Halles, still located in the heart of the Capital”, explains the program. In a video of the INA which scrolls on the screen, the narrator describes a scene on which we can see waste floating in dirty water. “At a certain time of the morning, we let go of the water. We believe a priori that the water will fix things, in reality you will very quickly find that the water does not fix anything at all”he says. “At the time, hygiene rules were almost non-existent. And several thousand French people died each year from food poisoning”, reports the voice of the report. Since then, fortunately, advances in infectious disease science and food preservation technology have drastically reduced this number. Advances which, although remarkable, still have some flaws…