PARIS — When the French dairy giant Lactalis began recalling baby formula, Ségolène Noviant thought she was safe. The milk she had been feeding her 5-month-old son wasn’t on the list.

Then her son, Noan, was rushed to the emergency room with a fever, diarrhea and internal bleeding. His formula was tainted with salmonella — and a broad range of other Lactalis powdered milk products still on the shelves were at risk, too.

It would take three recalls and many weeks for the scope of the problem to finally become clear, stoking public outrage over what has become known in France as “l’affaire Lactalis.” In one of the biggest recalls of its kind, the company has pulled more than 7,000 tons of potentially contaminated baby formula and other powdered milk products across more than 80 countries, mostly in Europe, Africa and Asia. And its chief executive said on Thursday that the company’s powdered milk products may have been exposed to salmonella for more than a decade.

The massive recall and the missteps along the way have exposed corporate lapses and regulatory gaps that allowed tainted products to make their way into supermarkets and pharmacies, even weeks after the problems were discovered. The episode at Lactalis, which also makes yogurt, butter and cheese, has highlighted what critics say is lax oversight of industrial food companies and weak reporting standards across the European Union.