Health alert over expired Tampico

The bottled Tampico you are drinking could be expired, says investigation carried out by The Heritage newspaper.

The paper says its checks have revealed that some shops within the city, especially those within Kokomlemle, are selling expired Tampico, the citrus drink produced by Fan Milk Ghana Limited.
Tampico citrus drink that contains orange, tangerine, lemon juice and is enriched with vitamin C, which has been in existence for over eight years, has recently been hit by consumer complaints.

Last week Friday the first of such cases was detected when a bottled Tampico in the 1,000 ml container with an expiry date of 28/01/07 was bought from one of the shops.

Subsequent follow-ups revealed a couple of other bottles and sachet ones all expired but still on the shelves for sale. Surprisingly, the owner of the shop had no idea the drinks had expired and told this paper that she had bought them from a shop at Mallam Atta Market recently.

Then again, on Monday April 16, the second case was reported when this time 500ml container of the drink was bought with an expiry date of 26/03/07. Further checks from the shop revealed that a whole box of the drink was expired. However, another bottle from the next shop also had its expiry date as 04/06/07, giving the firm consolation that not all the citrus drinks on the shelves have become unsafe for drinking.

The situation has resulted in great concern over the safety of food items that are being sold in shops especially bottled, canned and tinned food products.

When an official of Fan Milk was contacted, he said the company does not sell expired products and blamed the retailers whom, he said, might have hoarded the products beyond their expiry dates.

Credit: The Heritage