After a few bites, the boy grabbed his neck and couldn't breathe: After a two-year-old died asphyxia, the German Herta group had to answer to court in France.
Lilian, two years and eleven months old, suffocated in August 2014 at a campsite on the Atlantic coast where the family was spending their summer vacation.
The mother had prepared sliced crispy sausage and green beans for several children.
The trial against the meat product manufacturer from Herten in North Rhine-Westphalia began in the city of Dax in southwest France.
The charge is negligent homicide.
After the boy choked on the sausage ("Knacki"), neither the desperate parents nor a nurse friend had managed to get the piece of sausage outside again.
The boy suffered cardiac arrest.
Even paramedics failed to revive him.
Parents ask for a warning on the front
"The diameter of the sausages corresponds exactly to that of the baby's esophagus," criticized the family lawyer.
After the accident, the manufacturer had put a new warning on the back of the French packaging.
There it says: "For children under four years of age, cut the sausage lengthways and then into very small pieces to avoid the risk of suffocation." The parents want to have the notice on the front.
The sausage manufacturer referred in court to the further development of the packaging.
The defense also said that any food was potentially fatal for young children.
According to its own information, the sausage manufacturer Herta has locations in Herten in Westphalia as well as in Illkirch and Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise in France.
As Nestlé France writes, the company joined the Nestlé Group in 1986.
Icon: The mirror
apr / dpa / AFP