Jessica Klinkenberg
Northern News Services
Published Monday, December 31, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - It's a parent's' worst nightmare; their baby is throwing up, has diarrhea and refuses to eat.

They take her to the doctor and he can't tell what's wrong with her.

That's what happened to Sally Morris and Jason Card with their eight-month-old daughter Nevaeh Card over the Christmas holiday.

Nevaeh Card examines a jar of Heinz baby food from WalMart. Her parents purchased and fed the eight-month-old the food from the jars without realizing that the quality seal on the top had popped and the contents inside spoiled. They say their baby was sick over the Christmas holiday because of the bad food. Is your baby food safe? In order to determine whether your baby food is safe, take an unopened jar and put your finger on the lid. If it makes a popping sound when you apply pressure, or dips in and back up then its vacuum seal has been broken. The lid should be flat and not have a popped up safety button on top.

They fed Nevaeh Heinz chicken casserole baby food purchased from Wal-Mart that night.

"At 10 o'clock the next day she was vomiting everywhere," said Morris.

On the second day the baby started having diarrhea.

"She didn't eat anything for the whole three days (she was sick)," said Card.

"She didn't pee for a whole day," said Morris.

They were worried that something might be serious and that she was getting dehydrated so they took her to see a doctor on the second day.

"When we went in the doctor said it could have been a virus," said Card but he said that even the doctor wasn't 100 per cent on what was wrong with her.

They said they realized the cause behind Nevaeh's illness when Card went to feed her the day after they saw the doctor.

He said that the first jar of the Heinz baby food that he brought out had a few flecks of baby food around the rim.

"I just assumed a jar had broken in the case," he said. He rinsed it in the sink and that's when he realized that even though the plastic seal on the outside of the jar was still intact, the jar's lid had popped, indicated that the lid's seal was no longer airtight.

After that the pieces to the puzzle all fit, said Morris.

"I had food poisoning before," she said.

They figured the popped lids had caused the baby food to spoil.

The couple returned the 10-12 jars they had purchased from Wal-Mart right away and informed the manager on duty that they may have some more on the shelves.

"When I told the manager he didn't seem too concerned, he just kind of walked away," said Morris.

That was on Boxing Day.

On Dec. 28, they returned to Wal-Mart to pick up a few other things.

"We thought we might as well go see if there were anymore," she said.

Sure enough, there were still jars on the shelves with popped tops, said Morris.

On Monday, store manager Richard Farquhar told Yellowknifer he was aware of the problem when it came up on Boxing Day.

"It should have been off the shelf," said Farquhar. "I didn't realize that it hadn't been done."

He said that they rarely see something like that happening at Wal-Mart.

Yellowknifer found and purchased three jars of Heinz baby food with popped lids at Wal-Mart Friday night.

Farquhar said on Monday that all Heinz baby food jars with popped lids had since been removed.

But when Yellowknifer returned later that day, three more jars of baby food with popped lids were found and purchased, including one produced by Gerber Products.

Dr. Andre Corriveau, chief medical officer for the Northwest Territories, said his department was not aware of the spoiled baby food at Wal-Mart when contacted Monday afternoon.

He said Health and Social Services would prefer to be informed in situations like this one.

"If we suspect a problem with food it would be ideal to notify the public health unit so we can take the appropriate measures," said Corriveau.

Some of those measures would include notifying the public.

Corriveau said that food poisoning in infants is very hard to diagnose, since the infant can't say what is wrong with them, and the symptoms are non-specific.

"The baby would tend to cry, get diarrhea, vomiting. They're very non-specific symptoms."

Joan Patterson, manager of Communications and corporate affairs with Heinz Canada, said that what may have happened was that the baby jars were handled roughly in transit.

She said a case of baby food jars could have been dropped or jostled around on the long drip to Yellowknife.

Morris and Card say they should have checked the jars to ensure they were sealed properly but they are unhappy to learn Wal-Mart didn't make sure all the popped jars were removed after their complaint.

Nevaeh isn't back to her normal self yet, but the parents aren't as worried anymore, now that they have it figured out.

"She's not 100 per cent but she's starting to come around," said Card.

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