Seven children and three employees of the El Tomillar public nursery school, in Torrelodones, suffered from food poisoning on October 31, as reported by the Ser channel and confirmed by the regional deputy of the PSOE, Lorena Morales, warned by the children’s families. The food was provided by Plataforma Femar, already a repeat offender in the delivery of food in poor conditions to retirement homes in 2023, and which despite this won new awards in the following tender through which the Community of Madrid subcontracts the distribution of food to the 58 centers. which depend on the Madrid Social Assistance Agency (AMAS).
The families are still waiting for Health to provide them with test results on the unhealthy food, which Morales said was spoiled chicken. The El Tomillar school is adjacent to the Nuestra Señora de Lourdes children’s residence and shares with it a kitchen, which is the one that receives the food from Plataforma Femar. The Ministry of Family, Youth and Social Affairs, to which AMAS depends, did not respond to elDiario.es to a question about what happened, but Ser quotes a spokesperson who confirms the episode and limits it to diarrhea symptoms that they didn’t need. hospitalization.
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The socialist deputy understands that behind this new episode are hidden the “sheets of misery” of the AMAS, which, when rating the offers, sets a “minimum” rating for such important elements of supply as the maintenance of the cold chain. Femar scored very low in this section (0.66 points out of four), but still got three lots of 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 belonging to three cartels for distributing calls for tenders, following a case resulting precisely from a AMAS complaint. The CNMC’s resolution came after the current contract was awarded.
The Community of Madrid claimed, after the first recorded episode, that food was never served to residents. Morales recalls that the reports on the supervision and control of the hygienic-sanitary quality of the supply, also outsourced, “constituted an outcry on the way in which the cold chain was systematically broken and on the way in which food was delivered in poor condition”, and that the staff of The centers, however attentive they are, cannot control everything, because this is not their function and not all health problems are visible to the naked 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 had gastroenteritis or something else in soup kitchens and people never reported it?” he asks. Among the 58 centers directly managed by AMAS are children’s homes, retirement homes, employment centers for people with intellectual disabilities and soup kitchens. Before the Community of Madrid decided to unify food supply contracts, it was the centers themselves that chose their suppliers according to their budget.
