Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Out-of-date baby food sold to mum
A DUNDEE woman has hit out after a fruit pot she bought and fed to her baby turned out to be five months out of date.
Lisa Clarke from Charleston purchased the snack from a Co-op store in Balloch — where she was visiting family.
After arriving back home, she fed fivemonth-old Sophie half of the pot before she realised it was well past its best before date.
The 24-year-old factory worker has lodged a complaint with the company in the aftermath of the “scary” incident that she says saw baby Sophie fall ill after consuming the food — suffering from sickness and diarrhoea.
She today told the Tele that she was “panicking” after seeing the date on the product. She said: “I went to the Co-op to get food and I saw that they had little fruit pots and bought one for my daughter Sophie.
“When we got back, I opened one up and started feeding it to her.
“I don’t know why but I looked at the date on it and realised that it was five months out of date.
“I was panicking when I saw it — I thought that I had poisoned my own baby.”
Lisa phoned NHS 24 and was told by medical experts to expect Sophie to have a bad stomach from the food.
She added: “I spoke to a senior nurse and they were shocked when I told them what had happened.
“She told me that I definitely had grounds to take it further.”
Lisa says she has spoken out to warn other mothers that they should check the dates on anything that they buy in stores — regardless of what product it is.
She said: “I don’t ever check the dates on things — apart from meat because they are shorter — as you always assume that it is in date.
“Thank God Sophie is OK, it could have been much worse.
“I will be checking everything from now on because I don’t want this to happen again.
“I phoned up and made a complaint because the shelf was full of them.
“I don’t think that it is acceptable — especially given that it was baby food.
“You would think that they would be even more careful knowing that it was going to be fed to a baby.
“The shop isn’t really big either, I could understand it more if it was huge and had lots of stuff in it because it would be harder to keep track.”
A Co-op spokeswoman confirmed the company had launched an investigation into the incident and apologised to the family.
She told the Tele: “We are committed to the highest standards of food safety for our customers and are very sorry that on this occasion these were not followed.
“We are in direct contact with the family regarding the matter and are investigating it as a matter of urgency.”