Product Recall

Hubby and I don’t buy sweetcorn unless it’s in a bag of frozen mixed veg, so when we saw this headline a couple of days ago, we weren’t too worried (source).

Warning to cook frozen sweetcorn properly after nine deaths

That is until I thought about it and so checked the bag in my freezer for the country of origin. As none were stated, the next step was to check the supplier on the internet and see if any products had been recalled.
Sure enough, ‘my bag’ of frozen mixed veg was listed, and the instructions were not to eat any of the contents but to take it back to the shop for a full refund, with or without a receipt.
As I’d purchased it a little while ago, even though it wasn’t open, I didn’t have a receipt, so as a back up, we printed off the instructions and up I went to the shop.

As if the thought of frozen veg being contaminated wasn’t enough, what followed in the shop was a little more worrying.
I spoke to a member of staff supervising the self service tills and asked her what I had to do regarding recalled items. She looked blank.
I explained what we’d read and showed her the printout to which she responded she knew nothing about it. She tweaked her walkie talkie to speak to a supervisor, and they didn’t know anything about it either.

Anyway, rather than me have to queue for a checkout operator to get my refund, she sent me along to a closed checkout and called for a cashier. Naturally several other shoppers followed wanting to start a new queue at a new checkout.
It took a few minutes for the cashier to come to the till, and when I explained, she asked
‘Where did you read this? And where did you get this notice?’
I told her we’d seen it on the internet news headlines and printed off their recall notice as I didn’t have a receipt.
‘We know nothing about this,’ she said, madly punching in keys on her till screen pad and waiting for a response.
‘OK. 79p then? Is that what you paid?’
I said I thought so, and if it helped she was welcome to keep the printout from the internet.
She told me there was no need as she’d found something to confirm what I was saying and flagged it.

There was no problem getting a refund, but there were no notices anywhere in the shop about the product recall. I had other shopping to do, including in the freezer department, but noticed there were no more bags of ‘my mixed veg’ in the cabinet, though there were some more expensive packs of stir fry mix which included sweetcorn. I didn’t buy any.

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