I am so much more motivated than the typical consumer. My goal is that when someone else (your typical lazy consumer who may only care to get a refund) returns a can of worms to the grocery store, that the grocer have an obligation¹ to record the food quality/security issue and report it in a way that it gets tracked and ideally in a centralised place.

So indeed as I said, we need to evolve more. We have banks hyper-reporting on mere suspicion of something they perceive as off under excessive AML rules as if there is a gun to their head, yet you bring a real live creepy crawly to a grocer and there is minimal action… as you say getting swept under the rug as shrinkage.

¹ or pressure of some kind.

It’s something that should have been recorded and analysed. Perhaps they would discover something, like maybe they should inspect the rooibos before adding the white chocolate (if they are not already).

It might have had that, I don’t know; I don’t have the tin anymore. But indeed, we need to evolve more. Consumers are not going to pay to ship a tin to a producer. Store returns are managed by stores who potentially ship stuff back to their suppliers. In this case a bean-counter refused a return which then caused them to neglect to record a creepy crawly in their own food brand.

It was alive. It was in the tin for a while too. The tin had a tight fitting lid so there is no way it could have entered after I bought it and put it in my pantry. I did not discover it until about half the roobios was consumed.

(edit) just attached a pic to the OP.

Guess I should phrase it as a food security issue, not food safety, since security is broader and covers shortages. I probably got less “food” because that live worm has a lot more weight per volume than rooibos I was buying. Plus it probably ate some of it. So there’s my courtroom testimony ready to go :)

I did not reach out to them in this particular case. But I would expect Test Achats to focus on getting me a refund of 2 euros or whatever it is; I would not think Test Achats would do anything to intervene in quality control.

When I have contacted Test Achats in the past, they said something like subscribe to their magazine to become a member, then they will advocate for me on consumer issues. I decided not to subscribe.

Then a few years later I complained about at a consumer issue to a gov agency who then forwarded the complaint to ECCNET, which apparently is the same org as Test Achats. They responded to say they only handle cross-border problems and that anything that is entirely in Belgium (where both the consumer and merchant are in Belgium) is outside of their jurisdiction.

Glad to hear it!

This is a close-up shot:

https://lone.earth/w/7uFGbG6SZrUKiX1mFFT4NR

I thought it was dead at first but then it finally moved. It was perhaps nearly dead. I put it outside.

It’s two floors up from ground level. The sewer pipes are decent on that floor and the floor below AFAIK. On the ground floor the sewer pipes are certainly questionable and sometimes emit odors. I get lots of rain and in fact part of that results in slugs entering my ground floor kitchen. Not sure how they get in. Sometimes there are rats in the walls and basement, but never the living space.

I have no kids or pets that could have brought it in.

Thanks for the feedback!