A number of Stella Artois bottles filled with concentrated alcohol strictly for display were the cause of a tampering scare in July, the brand’s brewer announced today.
Toronto’s Labatt Breweries said its investigation found that the affected bottles were meant for display purposes and were supposed to be mounted inside Plexiglas casings. For display purposes, concentrated alcohol was substituted for beer.
“It appears that in a few isolated incidents, a bottle was removed from a display, and then later inadvertently placed into the bar fridge and subsequently provided to a customer,” the company wrote. The incidents were accidental with no intent to harm consumers, it added.
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Labatt said it had done two “comprehensive Canada-wide blitzes, plus a third in Ontario,” working with bar owners to find and retrieve bottles meant for the displays. It also said it has imposed “strict, new control procedures related to marketing displays.”
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency had issued a warning of suspected tampering on July 12 after “reported reactions of vomiting” associated with some 330-mL bottles of Stella consumed at restaurants and bars in Kamloops, B.C. and Toronto.
CFIA said at the time that concentrated alcohol had been introduced into the bottles, which were well past their expiry codes of 11.2005 and 12.2005 and shouldn’t have been on the market in the first place.
