A judge in Belgium has convicted the parents of a seven-month-old boy who died of malnutrition after he was fed a vegan diet.
The boy’s parents were sentenced to a suspended six-month prison sentence Wednesday for "unintentionally" causing the child's death.
The boy, identified in court documents as Lucas, weighed just nine pounds at the time of his death in 2014. Reports indicate the boy’s organs had shrunk to half their normal size, and had no fat surrounding them.
The Lucas’ parents run a health food store in the town of Beveren, and fed him a diet of milk made from made from oats, buckwheat, rice and quinoa.
The attorney representing Lucas’ parents argued in court that his mother was unable to breastfeed, and that Lucas would not drink traditional formula. At that point, the parents assumed that Lucas had either a lactose or gluten allergy.
Lucas’ father said in court that he never took the boy to the doctor because he “never noticed anything unusual," but prosecutors claimed that the parents drove the boy to a homeopathic when they noticed that he was sick.
The parents can still appeal the sentence.
Lucas’ parents aren’t the only ones to face legal trouble after putting their infant children on a vegan diet. According to Broadly, an Italian father took his child’s mother to court after she forced her children to eat vegan in May 2015, and two other parents lost custody of their child in 2014 after forcing the child to eat vegan.
