Woman Finds “Rubbery Plastic” Objects Inside Her Baby's Food Pouch

A mother in Australia was left disgusted after finding repulsive foreign objects inside a packet of baby food she purchased for her 8-month-old son.

Vicki Dawson from Queensland found long and short pieces of a dark and rubbery substance in the pouch of apple, banana and oats-flavored Smiling Tums on Monday.

She then posted pictures of the objects to the Facebook page of Woolworths, the grocery chain which manufactured the baby food, News.Com reported.

The mother captioned her post, “Seriously? Just opened one of my son's packages (and) it’s full of some rubbery plastic c**p. Called the Woolworths I (bought) it from and I was literally offered a REPLACEMENT. Why would I want a replacement of this c**p?” (sic)

According to Dawson, the product was purchased from the Woolworths inside Queensland’s Orion Springfield Central shopping centre at Ipswich on Dec. 23, 2020, Yahoo News reported. The expiry date of the packet was Oct. 2, 2021.

"I had put the contents into a bowl to feed it to him and when I mixed it to get a spoonful of it, the substance was on the spoon. It’s like a weird, thin, rubbery texture. I would say it's mould or fungus type stuff,” she said.

When Dawson contacted Woolworths, the company offered a replacement for the product. However, the mother was upset that more wasn't being done, and urged other parents to throw away the product or return it.

After her post went viral, Woolworths announced it has launched an investigation into the incident. According to the spokesman for Woolworths, it regularly conducted tests on its products.

"This is a rare incident but we are treating it seriously. We treat food safety very seriously and have moved quickly to assess this customer’s report with our baby food pouch supplier,” said the statement. “Our supplier operates to the highest food safety standards and is equipped with magnets, metal detectors and screens to detect any foreign objects. Given all of these food safety controls, issues such as this are incredibly rare and we’ll work with our supplier to establish how it could have happened once the product is returned.”

Woolworths said they had not received any other complaints of a similar nature regarding the product. “It appears to be an isolated incident, as we’re unaware of any other reports of a similar nature on this product at this time,” a spokesman said.