An Oshawa, Ont., woman got more than she bargained for in a bag of chips.
Ashlee Hefferon says she was enjoying a bowl of ruffled PC brand potato chips, when she noticed something was off with one of them — something stuck to a chip and it wasn’t salt.
“I poured it into the bowl, and I’m eating the chips,” says Hefferon.
“I grab one, and I noticed one had a blob of melted plastic on it,” she said.
It’s the second time in recent months that Presidents Choice-branded products have been alleged to have foreign objects found in food as well.
“It was just really random and weird,” she says. “I had no idea how it got there.”
Hefferon says the chips were purchased from No Frills in Oshawa, a brand owned by the parent grocery giant, Loblaw Companies. Hefferon sat on the issue for a bit, and then decided to email the company about quality control. She claims it was two weeks before someone replied to her in an email with an apology and offered her $10 worth of PC points.
“It’s melted plastic on food, and he ignored it and said that he was going to send out those points and was sorry for what happened,” Hefferon said.
The points were not really a concern for Hefferon. She’s just worried how the plastic got there in the first place and pushed them for an answer.
“I didn’t call in going, ‘Hey, give me points,” she said. “I called in going, ‘This is what happened, how did this happen? And can you actually tell me how you’re going to investigate?'”
Global News reached out about the incident to Loblaw. In a statement, a spokesperson said, “It goes without saying that we take food safety incredibly seriously. That’s why when the matter was brought to our attention we requested that the customer send us the sample in question.”
But Ashlee claims there was a lot of confusion over how she was supposed to get the product back to them, saying a return envelope was sent to the wrong address. The next one they asked her to pick up outside of the region.
She said the whole situation became frustrating, leaving her to decide to hold on to the product for now. She’s more focused on her worries about what might have happened.
“I could have gotten sick from this or my daughter could have gotten sick from this, because you know, it’s plastic.”
It’s not the first time an incident like this one has happened either. At the end of October a family came forward, saying they found a rock in their PC-brand frozen fruit. They also were offered PC points, but asked for accountability from company.
Loblaw says they will continue working with Hefferon on the file and say if they had the chip they would work along with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to get to the bottom of what might have happened. But for now they say their hands are tied until they can see the sample.