Rishard Khan & Carisa Lee

The Kiss Bak­ing Com­pa­ny has con­firmed it re­called bread over the week­end but de­nies it was for the pres­ence of glass as be­ing re­port­ed on so­cial me­dia. 

A state­ment from gen­er­al man­ag­er Rene De­Gannes said a re­call was ini­ti­at­ed. How­ev­er, he said the com­pa­ny sus­pect­ed that a piece of plas­tic may have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed a loaf of bread.

“It is high­ly un­like­ly that this oc­curred but out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, we re­moved all bread that may have been af­fect­ed by the piece of plas­tic from Trinidad. This does not af­fect any bread in the is­land of To­ba­go,”De­Gannes said.

“Kiss Bak­ing Co Ltd wish­es to as­sure all our cus­tomers that there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of glass be­ing present in any of our prod­ucts. Our man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es do not use any equip­ment con­tain­ing glass. Our cus­tomers can be con­fi­dent that the bread avail­able in the mar­ket and at present in their homes is per­fect­ly safe.”

He as­sured that if any­one has doubts or con­cerns, the com­pa­ny “will re­fund the full val­ue of the loaf or loaves via the re­tail­er from which the prod­uct was pur­chased.”

The prod­ucts re­called were all large sliced sand­wich loaves, Kiss Hot Dog bread, Co­conut Bun and Healthy Bal­ance whole­grain buns.

Over the week­end, a video sur­faced on so­cial me­dia of what ap­peared to be Kiss work­ers dump­ing the loaves of bread on their com­pound. This sparked wide de­bate on so­cial me­dia, lead­ing to Kiss’ state­ment yes­ter­day as spec­u­la­tion about the safe­ty of the bread prod­ucts con­tin­ued.

A pic­ture post­ed on Face­book al­so be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing of a large ob­ject em­bed­ded with­in one of the loaves.

“Yes­ter­day, while feed­ing my son break­fast I came across this in the bread, he was like mum­my what is this, on­ly to re­alise a piece of tile in the bread, I was so busy that I didn’t get time to put it up, but yes ppl it is true there are pieces of ma­te­r­i­al in the bread,” the per­son post­ed.

De­Gannes dis­put­ed this pic­ture but said the per­son would be con­tact­ed.

“To­tal­ly un­re­lat­ed, un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed and needs to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by our Cus­tomer Ser­vice Team. We shall make every at­tempt to con­tact the con­sumer that made the post,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

The per­son who made the post, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, told Guardian Me­dia she had not yet been con­tact­ed by the com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, she in­sist­ed she did not fab­ri­cate it as some are claim­ing on so­cial me­dia.

“I have no rea­son to lie. Peo­ple say­ing I want mon­ey and I want...I work­ing. I have no rea­son to lie,” she said.

“I ap­plaud the quick re­sponse tak­en...mis­take do hap­pen but glad to know the batch was re­called,” she said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee told Guardian Me­dia that Kiss Bak­ing Com­pa­ny act­ed re­spon­si­bly by re­call­ing their prod­uct and try­ing to rec­ti­fy the is­sue. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted his body could have been no­ti­fied soon­er.

“The com­pa­ny could have reached out to SATT soon­er in an at­tempt to man­age the cri­sis. How­ev­er, af­ter con­ver­sa­tions with the man­age­ment of Kiss Bak­ing Com­pa­ny to­day (yes­ter­day), we are sat­is­fied with the me­dia re­lease they have put out and we are pre­pared to sup­port them with all mea­sures...that have to be tak­en to en­sure that any cus­tomer who pur­chas­es a po­ten­tial­ly de­fec­tive prod­uct can come back to the re­tail­er for a full re­fund,” Diptee said.

So­cial me­dia users had mixed feel­ings about the com­pa­ny’s re­lease. Some, like Lisa, chas­tised the com­pa­ny for what they be­lieved was a de­layed re­sponse on the mat­ter.

“On Sat­ur­day you made the re­call but your state­ment is on­ly now be­ing is­sued. This is for Fri­day’s bread. How many per­sons would’ve con­sumed from this batch of bread al­ready?” she said.

It was a sen­ti­ment shared by an­oth­er user named Sasha.

“Why are you all on­ly now send­ing out this re­lease? Even if it was in fact plas­tic, peo­ple were talk­ing about this since yes­ter­day (Sat­ur­day) morn­ing. I would have more re­spect if you all owned up the same time you were send­ing out the dri­vers to rec­ol­lect the items,” she said.

Oth­ers, like Ang­ie, be­lieved the state­ment to be too vague. 

“I try­ing to un­der­stand “High­ly un­like­ly,” she said.