Food giants Nestle have apologised for sending a EUR 20 voucher to a girl who was stricken with the deadly E. coli after eating one of their pizzas.

The French youngster caught the bug from a Buitoni pizza, made by the Swiss food company.

The mother – whose six-year-old daughter Mila was hospitalised by the infection – was horrified when she received the voucher by email apparently as compensation.

Mum Sonia told local media how Buitoni’s customer service department contacted her to ask about what had happened.

She explained: “She asked me questions, in particular relating to everything that had happened with my daughter. Even though we hired a lawyer, I didn’t think to tell him to contact Me Legrand for any questions.”

She added: “My head was elsewhere, I confided in this lady, I explained the facts. She offered me, for the sake of the investigation, to come back to me in a few days to have access to my daughter’s medical file at the University Hospital of Poitiers.

“I found that strange. I did not want. It destabilized me, it still falls under medical secrecy.

“The next day, I received a letter offering me a voucher to apologise for the inconvenience. It shocked me, it’s outrageous!

“It’s so ridiculous! Rather than having EURO 20 I’d have nothing at all!

The infection was reportedly related to the Buitoni brand Fraich’Up pizzas, withdrawn last month because of suspected contamination in the dough with E. coli O26.

The recall followed a probe that identified dozens of cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) linked with people who had eaten the frozen pizzas.

HUS is a type of kidney failure associated with E. coli infections that can result in lifelong, serious health problems and death.

The victims include an 8-year-old boy who died in Paris after suffering from HUS, and a newborn baby who died eight hours after birth, presumably contaminated in the womb after the mother ate a pizza.

A 12-year-old girl is also in a vegetative state and no longer reacts to stimuli from her surroundings, and a 7-year-old child had multiple cardiac arrests with other cases also reported, including one family with three children aged two, nine and 10 who were all hospitalised after being linked with the contamination.

There are a total of 53 confirmed cases as of last week including the two dead children, with 26 more cases being investigated.

Lawyer Pierre Debuisson, who is defending 40 of the victims’ families, said that part of the case is the fact that the food giant had simply reacted too slowly.

He said: “The first hospitalisations occurred in January and the plant’s production lines were not closed until March 18. They let the products get sold out and other children were contaminated.”

Many people with HUS recover within a few weeks, but some suffer permanent injuries or death as with the latest incident.

This condition can occur among people of any age but is most common in children younger than five years old because of their immature immune systems, older adults because of deteriorating immune systems, and people with compromised immune systems such as cancer patients.

A spokesperson for Buitoni, owned by Nestle, claimed that the voucher was sent out by mistake because the mother posted a claim on the government consumer protection website.

Customer care workers claimed that the mother had made a “refund demand” and automatically issued the voucher by email.

The mother told local media that Nestle “valued a girl’s pain and illness as EUR 20”.

She called the incident where so many children were killed or critically injured the “biggest health scandal in the last 20 years”.

The Swiss multinational has already announced plans to withdraw a number of their products suspected of being contaminated with E. coli.

The Buitoni spokesperson said of the EUR 20 payment: “This should not have been done and we would like to offer our most sincere apologies to the consumer who may have been offended by the receipt of the voucher.”

Meanwhile, the health authorities in Paris have reportedly opened an investigation into Nestle for endangering people’s lives and possibly even manslaughter.

When contacted for a statement the Swiss company said that because the investigation was ongoing they were cooperating fully with the authorities, but were ‘not able to give any extra information until such time as the report was finished’.

They added: “We want to reaffirm that the safety and quality of our products are our top priorities.”

The Caudry plant where the infection is believed to have happened stopped production on March 18 on the day that the pizza recall was announced.

Only the Buitoni brand was mentioned in a press release announcing the decision to recall the pizzas and did not mention the owner of the brand, Nestle.

The Italian company Buitoni, which built the Caudry site in northern France no longer exists. It was bought in 1988 by the Swiss group, which eventually only kept the frozen pizza production.