Woolworths has distanced itself from the questionable Lucky Star pilchards and launched its own investigation into how the counterfeit canned fish ended up on its cartons.
Last week, seven undocumented migrants were arrested by police in Gauteng during a raid at a factory in Daleside near Meyerton where they were found printing equipment to alter expiration dates and a batch of falsely labelled canned pilchards.
The food retail giant on Saturday said it was aware of the recent police investigation into the discovery of a counterfeit operation involving canned pilchards in Woolworths-branded cartons found in a facility in Gauteng.
Woolworths reiterated that it takes food safety and the wellbeing of its customers extremely seriously, thus emphasised that that Woolworths-labelled products must only be purchased at Woolworths stores, or through Woolworths online channel.
“Whilst this investigation is ongoing, we have strong reason to believe that the product in question may have formed part of an imported shipment from an international supplier that was rejected by Woolworths, as a result of it failing to meet our stringent quality control standards,” Woolworths said in a statement.
“In the event of product being rejected, it becomes the immediate responsibility of the supplier to collect and dispose of the stock from our warehouse responsibly. We have launched our own investigation to determine why this process was not adhered to in this instance.”
As the police investigation proceeds, it remains clear at the moment whether some of the large quantity of the counterfeit Lucky Star pilchards made it to informal spaza shops on the back of growing food-borne diseases.
The police also discovered printing equipment which was used to alter expiry dates on the containers of expired Lucky Star packaging.
According to conclusive tests conducted by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a banned pesticide - Terbufos - has been linked to the deaths of several children in South Africa.
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday gave all spaza shops around the country 21 days to register with the necessary government channels or face closure following at least 22 deaths of children and hundreds of others getting sick over the last few weeks. - BR Reporter