AN eight-year-old girl has died and her elder brother has been left brain dead after they ate contaminated pilchards earlier this week, the SA Bureau of Standards (SABS) said on Friday. The girl died after she and her 12-year-old brother were airlifted to Johannesburg on Thursday, SABS representative Kenny Mathivha said. He said the two ate the fish on Monday and were subsequently taken to the Heidelberg Hospital before being flown to the Johannesburg Hospital. ”The kids, staying with their grandmother (in a township on the East Rand) thought this was a delicacy and they started eating,” Mathivha said. The pilchards were bought from a spaza shop in Springs. The shop had received the fish from a distributor who in turn acquired it from an intermediary for a well-known supermarket chain. Mathivha said the SABS conducted a random inspection of the intermediary’s warehouse in City Deep where the cans of fish were deemed to be of an inferior quality. He said none of the fish containers had labels and were dented. ”We do not recommend dented tinned-stuffs because chances of bacteria are very high. We always advise people not to use tinned-stuffs which do not have labels because people don’t know what is inside,” he said. In this case the fish products were not certified and thus were not suitable for public consumption. Mathivha said the SABS did not carry out follow-up inspections and the onus was on the company to dispose of the products. The intermediary, nevertheless, distributed the fish to shops. Mathivha said it was believed that the products were still on store shelves and warned people against buying food which was not labelled. Police have opened an inquest docket. – Sapa
Friday March 1, 2002