Woman finds cockroach in bottled drink

A St Elizabeth woman says she nearly swallowed a cockroach yesterday after she opened a sealed drink and was about to take a sip.

"I saw a cockroach swimming at the top of it. I felt so disgusted," she told THE STAR. "When mi knock the bottom and open it nuh the cockroach that me a swim pan the top."

"Mi vomit, mi stomach upset and mi just feel nasty," she said, adding others were equally sickened. "I always look before I consume things, a so comes it nuh reach me. But just the sight of it and almost drinking it, mek mi feel bad."

The woman said she and others had bought about a dozen bottles of the product, and now worry what might be inside the rest. She said that she reported the incident to the company.

"Mi a wait fi dem call me back cause dem need fi give me some reimbursement fi dis. This is slackness! It coulda be a baby or somebody that is blind. Them woulda drink the cockroach," she said. The woman said a co-worker told her that she found a worm inside a product from the same company.

"They reimbursed her with some funds and a basket but mi nuh want dem basket, because mi nuh want no worm nor no cockroach because I have kids," she said. The woman insisted the item had not been tampered with after purchase.

"It did more than seal. I don't need to lie, I have eyewitnesses," she said.

Dolsie Allen, CEO of the Consumer Affairs Commission (CAC), told THE STAR that when foreign objects are found in food or drink, the first step is to return the item to the place of purchase "to see at what stage the item would have appeared in the drink".

"Once it's opened, there is a level of compromise, so they will have to do their tests. If it was processed in the drink itself, then they have a way of finding out based on the whole production process," she said. Allen explained the usual chain of action is that the place of purchase usually contacts the manufacturer, and the Bureau of Standards is brought in to trace the batch number, pull samples from shelves, and test them to determine whether a production problem exists.

"We live in a real world and we have to be scientific in our approach," she said. If a consumer becomes ill after consuming a contaminated product, Allen said they should see a doctor and obtain a medical certificate documenting symptoms and any suspected ingestion. She noted that the CAC does not keep testing facilities on site, nor does it normally take the item directly from the consumer, unless the manufacturer is not cooperating.

She warned, however, that investigations must be balanced because some people have been known to fake or tamper with items and then make false claims on social media.

"We have to be aware of those types of things and that's why we have to do the requisite investigation and we have to be balanced. We want to protect consumers but at the same time we don't want anybody to take advantage of situations because they are a consumer," she said.