TAMPA, Fla. — We're asking questions about food safety and product tampering and you should too.
By now, you might have seen the viral video of a girl who removed the lid off an ice cream tub, licks the ice cream and put it back in the grocery store's freezer for another consumer to purchase and eat.
With this video fresh in our minds we wanted to see how many other products are vulnerable to tampering. We found you don't have to to look long to find products without a protective seal.
Ice cream is one of the biggest offenders. Some of the brands had a protective seal either around the lid or a peal-away seal under the lid.
However, others were in the grocery store's freezer with a simple lid, just like the tub the woman used in her viral licking video.
The condiment aisle also had products with a variety of sealing techniques. Honey, for example, had everything from protective outer seals to peal-away tabs under the lids, to nothing at all. It depends on the manufacturer.
Pickles also ran the gamut. Although most have the pop-up lid, it's easy to overlook or miss that as a busy consumer. In one instance, we found the same exact pickle product side by side but one had the outer sealing, the other did not.
David Steck, a food safety expert and owner of Serve It Up Safe said there aren't federal regulations over tamper-proof sealing. Steck said he believes manufacturers need to be responsible for their own product safety.
"They put tamper proof seals on motor oil. You should be putting tamper-proof seals on food products," Steck said.
Steck's advice to the consumer is to inspect what you take off the shelf and consider buying only products with tamper-proof packaging.
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