It is hard to forget the terrible tragedy that the families whose babies were medically harmed by the negligence of the baby food company Remedies nine years ago went through. Today (Thursday) the legal saga surrounding the Remedies affair is coming to an end.
The Lod District Court approved the plea agreement in the case of Fred Black, the company's food technologist, and former CEO Gidi Landsberger. According to the agreement, the food technologist's prison sentence will be reduced to a year and a half, while the CEO's sentence will be increased and he will serve 400 hours of community service, instead of a 10,000 NIS fine.
The two reached an agreement after appealing to the Central District Court their sentence - which was handed down a year ago in the Petah Tikva Magistrate's Court.
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The court of first instance convicted Fred Black of negligently causing the death of four infants and injuring dozens more, and sentenced him to two and a half years in prison. Landsberger was convicted of failing to comply with a standard and was sentenced to a fine of 10,000 shekels.
""We believed that when such a serious malfunction occurs in the production of baby food, responsibility for it should be placed not only on the shoulders of the professional who was in charge of the quality and safety of the product, but also on the shoulders of the managerial person, whose duty it is to ensure that the company's conduct ensures that failures of this type do not occur," the judges wrote in the ruling.
The Remedia affair began in November 2003, after it became clear that many infants fed the herbal infant formula produced by the German company Humana, which was marketed in Israel by Remedia, suffered from severe developmental problems in the nervous system, due to a lack of thiamine (vitamin B1) in the food.
Following the difficult events, the Attorney General's Office filed indictments against three senior Remedies executives and five Ministry of Health employees.
As mentioned, today the case ends with plea agreements, to the displeasure of the affected families.
Fred Black's lawyers responded by saying that they welcome the settlement reached by the parties, in which Mr. Black will be acquitted of the fraud offense for which he was convicted, an offense that was originally an extraneous element in the indictment. They also welcome the acceptance of their appeal regarding the severity of the sentence, as part of the settlement, Black's sentence was reduced to half the period set by the Magistrate's Court, and for this, the prosecution should be thanked, who saw things eye to eye with them.
The lawyers also wanted to add that, in the shadow of the terrible tragedy, they are satisfied that after more than ten years, the legal process has come to an end.
