Contaminated mineral water: how a health report unfavorable to Nestlé was modified by the French State.
Radio France’s investigative unit and the newspaper Le Monde have obtained access to the report of the Senate’s commission of inquiry into mineral water fraud. It highlights collusion between government agencies and the Nestlé group to alter a worrying health report.
A new spectacular twist in the Nestlé Waters bottled water case. As the socialist rapporteur in charge of the Senate’s commission of inquiry into mineral water fraud, Alexandre Ouizille, makes public this Monday the conclusions of his report on the sprawling mineral water fraud affair, revealed in February 2025 by the investigative unit of Radio France and Le Monde , a previously unknown episode sheds new light on this affair. Thanks to the testimony of a whistleblower, the rapporteur demonstrates how several ministries, but also a prefect, and the director of the Regional Health Agency of Occitanie, Didier Jaffre, agreed to modify, at the request of Nestlé, a report on the sanitary quality of the wells exploited in Vergèze in the Gard, where the Perrier brand is produced, “in order to conceal the contamination of wells contaminated by bacteria, but also herbicides and pesticide metabolites, sometimes banned for years” , and this despite the protests of at least one civil servant, who decided to withdraw his signature so as not to endorse the maneuver.
Read francebleu or radiofrance (French) or the Google translation (English)
see also: Macron, le «banquier de Nestlé», à l’Elysée? swissinfo, May 4, 2025 (French)
