Seven children and three workers at the El Tomillar public nursery school in Torrelodones suffered food poisoning on October 31, as reported by the Ser channel and confirmed by PSOE regional deputy Lorena Morales, who was notified by the children’s families. The food was supplied by Plataforma Femar, already a repeat offender in delivering food in poor conditions to nursing homes in 2023, and which despite this achieved new awards in the following tender by which the Community of Madrid subcontracts the distribution of food to the 58 centers that depend on the Madrid Agency for Social Care (AMAS).
The families are still waiting for Health to provide the results of the tests on the unhealthy food, which according to Morales was a spoiled chicken. The El Tomillar school is adjacent to the Nuestra Señora de Lourdes children’s residence and shares a kitchen with it, which is the one that receives the food from Plataforma Femar. The Ministry of Family, Youth and Social Affairs, on which AMAS depends, has not responded to elDiario.es to a query about what happened, but Ser quotes a spokesperson who confirms the episode and limits it to symptoms of diarrhea that They did not need hospitalization.
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The socialist deputy understands that behind this new episode are the “sheets of misery” of the AMAS, which when scoring the offers set a “minimum” score for such important elements of the supply as the maintenance of the cold chain. Femar scored very low in this section (0.66 points out of four), but still obtained three lots from the contract after appealing an initial resolution that left it out. The company was also sanctioned last summer by the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) for being part of three cartels for the distribution of tenders, following a file originated precisely by a complaint from the AMAS. The CNMC’s resolution came after the award of the current contract.
The Community of Madrid alleged, after the first recorded episode, that the food was never served to the residents. Morales recalls that the reports on supervision and control of the hygienic-sanitary quality of the supply, also outsourced, “were an outcry of how the cold chain was systematically broken and how food was delivered in poor condition,” and that the staff of The centers, no matter how attentive they may be, cannot control everything, since it is not their function nor are all health problems apparent to the eye. “Seven very young children and three workers were poisoned, which could be a tragedy. “How many people have been poisoned in nursing homes and have had gastroenteritis or something else in soup kitchens and people have never reported it?” he asks. Among the 58 centers directly managed by AMAS there are children’s homes, senior homes, occupation centers for people with intellectual disabilities and soup kitchens. Before the Community of Madrid decided to unify the contracting of food supplies, it was the centers themselves that chose suppliers based on their budgets.
Contacted by elDIario.es, the Community of Madrid affirms that the Madrid Social Care Agency notified Public Health, which carried out the corresponding inspection. “The cause of the outbreak was poor conservation of the stew after it was prepared in the kitchen of the children’s home, due to an incorrect cooling procedure,” add sources from the regional government, and assure that what happened will be investigated.
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