Austrian police have arrested a 39-year-old suspect in connection with the discovery of rat poison in jars of HiPP baby food — a case the company has described as an extortion attempt. The first contaminated jar caught the attention of a customer at a SPAR supermarket in Eisenstadt on April 18, and police later seized five tampered jars before they could be consumed, the Burgenland Criminal Police Office said Sunday.
The 190-gram jars of carrot-and-potato purée, intended for infants starting at five months, were found to contain traces of rodenticide. The customer reported that the jar appeared to have been manipulated, and police were alerted. No illnesses were reported.
HiPP, the German baby-food manufacturer based in Pfaffenhofen, said in a statement Saturday that it was “very relieved” by the arrest and that the jars had left its facility in “perfect condition.” The company disclosed that an unnamed blackmailer had sent a message to an address associated with the case, and that the company immediately turned the communication over to authorities. “HiPP has been the victim of extortion,” the statement said.
The suspect was taken into custody in the western state of Salzburg and was being interrogated. Officials said no further details would be released at this stage. The public prosecutor’s office in Burgenland announced an investigation on suspicion of “deliberately endangering the population,” and an expert report on the toxicity of the poison is pending, according to the Austria Press Agency.
As a precautionary measure, HiPP recalled all baby food jars sold in SPAR group supermarkets — SPAR, EUROSPAR, INTERSPAR and Maximarkt — in Austria. Retailers in Slovakia and the Czech Republic also pulled the affected products from their shelves. Company officials stressed that the recall was not prompted by any product defect or quality issue on HiPP’s part.