“I plead not guilty,” the 39-year-old defendant said in the Wiener Neustadt regional court. He was director of the Gloggnitz cheese factory, where he also produced the dairy product Kaymak. What he is accused of is serious: five people are said to have died as a result of listeriosis caused by contaminated products from his company. Six others, including a baby in the womb, became ill.
The defendant is the 39-year-old former director of the Gloggnitz cheese factory. The Public Prosecution Service has charged him with murder by gross negligence in five cases and with serious negligent bodily harm or serious bodily harm in six cases – between March 2020 and October 2022.
Tragic fate
One of the victims was not even born yet. Baby Maria (name changed) suffered from listeriosis when she was born in 2022, which was probably transmitted from her mother in the womb. She was born seven weeks prematurely, had to be ventilated and developed life-threatening sepsis.
“My client is a nurse. He is in a wheelchair and had to learn to speak again,” reports the representative of another seriously ill victim. The fact that the man survived was only due to his sporting lifestyle before the infection.
The director was previously a butcher
Listeria is a bacterium that causes listeriosis, a rare disease that is mainly transmitted through food. In this specific case, the bacteria is said to have appeared in Kaymak cheese. “Kaymak is a specific cheese that comes from the Balkans,” the accused Serb explains. His uncle had already produced this product at home. He learned it himself in a butcher’s shop in Vienna. Only five people still worked in his now closed cheese factory; he adopted the hygiene concept from the butcher’s shop.
Interesting: all victims live in Vienna. Five Austrians, three women and two men between the ages of 28 and 80, were killed. According to lawyer Elmar Kresbach, the accusation is based on a very fragile construction: “The bridge between the blameless defendant and the sad events is incomprehensible,” says the experienced lawyer, “it cannot just be anyone who is the scapegoat, so that someone is guilty .”
Fungi, insects and mice
The public prosecutor attributes the diseases to a lack of hygiene. The judge confronts the suspect with the numerous accusations: “There are no screens. There was no pest-proof door,” she explains, adding that even mice and rats could have entered the ripening room. “There is black mold on the walls. There is a musty, stale smell in the camp,” she reads. “There were puddles in the ripening room,” “During testing the inspector was not opened, sometimes no one was there.” – the defendant denies the accusations. He claims that he immediately corrected all deficiencies. A report was filed at the beginning of 2022.
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Source: Krone
I am Wallace Jones, an experienced journalist. I specialize in writing for the world section of Today Times Live. With over a decade of experience, I have developed an eye for detail when it comes to reporting on local and global stories. My passion lies in uncovering the truth through my investigative skills and creating thought-provoking content that resonates with readers worldwide.
