Mother says baby food jar led to hospitalization and police questioning

A day after Israel’s Health Ministry said lab tests found the prescription drugs clonazepam and lorazepam in jars of “Frינוק” baby fruit puree, Yaal Biton described what happened after her two daughters were hospitalized for eating the product. In an interview with Radio 103FM, she said the girls ate three teaspoons each and then collapsed. “It was serious panic,” she said, recalling that she came home to find both girls unconscious, one in her husband’s arms and the infant in her older daughter’s arms, while the other children were crying and screaming.

Biton said the family rushed the children to Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center, where doctors ran extensive tests. She said the hospital found benzodiazepines in the girls’ urine and told her they were stable. Biton said she warned staff that the jar in her bag was “poisoned” and must be tested because the girls collapsed immediately after eating from it. The drugs identified are sedatives from the benzodiazepine family.

She said the 11-year-old daughter who fed the babies suffered a severe emotional reaction. “She had a hard trauma,” Biton said, adding that the child had a panic attack, started vomiting, and kept asking, “I gave them that. Why did I give them that?” Biton said she reassured her daughter that it was a normal act, and that it was unbelievable such a thing could happen from baby fruit puree.

Biton also said the jar’s seal had seemed unusually tight, and the child did not hear the usual opening sound. She added that two days after the incident, she and her husband were taken in for police questioning as suspects in child abuse, while their daughters were still hospitalized. Biton said she immediately told investigators to examine the puree “on a nationalistic basis,” but they did not focus on that. She said another case occurred last Thursday with a family she knows, involving the same symptoms and a similarly tightly sealed jar, which she said strengthened suspicions that someone tampered with the jars.