Photo: nerissa’s ring / Flickr

After the death of their 11-month-old daughter two French vegans are on trial facing charges of ‘neglect or food deprivation’. Their daughter was found to be suffering from serious vitamin deficiencies which have been attributed to parents Joel Sergine and Joel Le Moaligou refusing to eat or feed their child any animal products. The couple became strict vegans after watching a TV show depicting animals being led to slaughter at an abbatoir. Unfortunately, this decision led to the death of their child.

Baby underweight and malnourished

The Moaligous called an ambulance to their home in Saint-Maulvis, a village 90 miles from Paris, in March 2008, when their daughter became listless. Baby Louise was dead by the time paramedics arrived on the scene.

Police noticed she was thin and pale, and a postmortem was ordered. It revealed that the child, fed only on breast milk, was very underweight and malnourished. At her age she should have weighed around 8kg, but she only weighed 5.7kg. It was also found she was deficient in vitamins B12 and A, which made her susceptible to infection. She died of illness related to pneumonia.

An ‘unbalanced diet’

Medical experts testifying in court said the child’s vitamin deficiency could have been due to an unbalanced diet. Deputy prosecutor Anne-Laure Sandretto, while hesitant to criticise the Moaligous’ lifestyle choice, admitted that Louise’s deficiency in vitamin B12 could have been linked to her mother’s diet. Vitamin B12 is found in the largest amounts in animal products like meat, eggs and milk.

Home remedies failed

Stephane Daquo, the mother’s attorney, said that the Maligous distrusted conventional medicine and chose rather to treat their child’s illness with advice from books on natural medicine. Rather than taking baby Louise to the hospital when a doctor advised them to, they chose to treat her mustard, camphor and cabbage poultices and also washed her feet in clay rather than bathing her.

The couple faces a 30-year prison sentence if found guilty of ‘neglect or food deprivation followed by death’. It’s said the parents have admitted to their mistake.

It’s not uncommon for children on a vegan diet to become ill due to vitamin deficiencies, and this is not the first reported death of a child due to an unbalanced diet.

Tags: baby, Parenting, vegan