Israel’s Health Ministry said on Friday that its investigation into the Prinoq baby food affair had found two more products containing the sedatives clonazepam and lorazepam, bringing the total to five contaminated products. According to the ministry, three of the products were handed over by families whose children were hospitalized after eating the purées, and two more were sampled directly from supermarket shelves in Jerusalem.
So far, authorities have reported two incidents involving five hospitalized children, with suspicion of exposure to benzodiazepines, psychoactive substances used to reduce anxiety and as sleeping pills. The article says the scandal could have been uncovered about a month earlier, when two children first arrived at Hadassah Ein Kerem emergency room with similar symptoms. Medical staff passed the purée to police, who asked the Health Ministry to test it, but the ministry did not do so for reasons that are not clear. Only after a second incident last Thursday, when three children were rushed to the emergency room at the same time, did the ministry ask police for the first jar to examine it.
The article focuses on whether the ministry may now face negligence claims and be required to compensate the families. Nuisance and torts lawyer Assaf Warshe said negligence in Israeli law requires four elements, duty of care, breach, damage and causation, and argued that the first two appear to exist here because the ministry is responsible for food safety, especially infant food, and should have tested a clearly identified suspicious product.
Warshe said the parents, not necessarily the children, may be the main victims because of the psychological shock of seeing their child collapse. He said compensation for temporary distress could amount to tens of thousands of shekels, while a lasting psychiatric injury could reach hundreds of thousands or more, depending on disability, age and work impact. He also said that if a similar case happened in the United States, sovereign immunity would likely block punitive damages against a government body, limiting recovery to proven actual harm.
