Morphine found in French poppy seed bread

PEOPLE in France are being warned to avoid eating poppy seed bread after tests found that it contained morphine and codeine, drugs that could cause intoxication, vomiting or nausea.

French health officials are investigating the unexplained presence of the drugs in baguettes and ready-made sandwiches.

Poppy seeds do not normally contain opiates and investigators suspect that a batch supplied to bakeries could have been contaminated with the latex sap of the plant, which contains alkaloids. They are unsure how much bread may have been contaminated.

Jean-claude Alvarez, the head of toxicology at the Raymond-poincaré hospital in Garches, near Paris, said a single sandwich made with poppy seed bread could contain as much as 4milligrams of morphine, the equivalent of nearly half a tablet of morphine sulphate given to people with cancer.

“I strongly advise people not to eat poppy seed bread until we tell them otherwise,” Dr Alvarez said. “The drugs we have found are only supposed to be used by people in severe pain … on top of that there is the risk of addiction.”

Some bakery products had been recalled after experts believed they had identified a contaminated batch.

The problem was found after staff at several companies tested positive for opiates in routine urine tests and were judged unfit to work.

Health officials realised they had all eaten poppy seed bread and tests confirmed “high amounts of alkaloids”.