Durban mother falls ill after eating chips from local tuckshop
A Durban mother fell ill after eating chips from a tuckshop owned by an Ethiopian national, a white substance was found in the packet.
A Durban mother has raised concerns about a suspicious substance found in a packet of maize chips, claiming it made her ill shortly after she consumed it.
White substance found in chips
Reaction Unit South Africa reported that Melissa Pillay, a 29-year-old stay-at-home mum from eThekwini, bought eight packets of tomato and chilli-flavoured maize chips.
She purchased them from a tuckshop near her home on Tuesday, 8 April.
She intended to pack them into her three children’s school lunchboxes.
“I gave them each a packet, and I ate one myself. Not long after, I started feeling sick,” she told Reaction Unit South Africa (RUSA), the private security and emergency response service she contacted for help.
Pillay said she inspected the packet and noticed a white substance inside.
Concerned that someone may have poisoned or drug-laced the chips, she immediately called RUSA’s operations centre.
Dispute at the tuckshop
RUSA officers contacted the children’s school and retrieved the chips from the learners’ bags before they could consume them.
When officers visited the tuckshop to inspect the packet. Pillay claimed that the shop’s employee had already taken both the opened packet and one sealed one from her.
The tuckshop worker denied selling the snacks to Pillay and stated that an Ethiopian national owns the business, but he was not present at the time.
RUSA has not confirmed what the white substance is, and it remains unclear whether the chips are contaminated.
Have you ever had a bad experience with snacks bought from a small shop?
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