"Around 25 potential customers could have eaten those jars of sardines", says Thierry Touzet, deputy director of the Gironde departmental directorate for population protection, as around ten cases of botulism, including one fatality, were reported after a meal of tinned sardines in a Bordeaux wine bar. According to Dr Benjamin Clouzeau, botulism is "a very fast-moving disease". "From the moment it attacks the nerves, it blocks them, and in a few minutes you can be dead," explains the intensive care physician at Bordeaux's Pellegrin hospital IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES