A Katy, Texas, man said his grandson discovered an unwanted ingredient inside his Dr. Pepper: a dead rat that was “about 3 inches long” with a tail and beady eyes.
John Graves said his grandson, Kayden, 3, drank half the bottle before he saw the dead rat.
“Nothing like your grandson drinking half a Dr. Pepper only to find a dead rat floating on the bottle,” Graves wrote on Facebook.
He said Dr. Pepper sent back a response, saying to “send us the bottle and we will let you know something in 6-8 weeks.”
“Are you kidding me? What if my grandson drank poison or disease? This was purchased in Galveston yesterday at Valero on 39th and Broadway,” he wrote. “Beware people. Way to stand behind your products Dr. Pepper.”
Speaking with KRPC-2 in Houston, Graves said his son seems fine.
“I want to get the rat tested to see where it came from, how it got there, if there is any medical concerns we should be concerned about,” Graves said. “There is no telling what could happen to that sample.”
Graves said his family might contact a lawyer and will work with Dr. Pepper to find out what to do next.
Dr. Pepper-Snapple also released a statement on the incident. It read:
“Nothing is more important to us than the safety and well-being of our consumers. We take all consumer complaints very seriously, are very concerned about the call we received today from Mr. Graves and are investigating it as best as we can.
“What we know from our experience is that given the controls and safeguards we have in our production facilities it is virtually impossible for any foreign object to enter any container during the bottling process. All of our containers enter our facility on pallets in our warehouse and remain covered until the moment they are placed on our high-speed filling lines. Once on the filling lines, they are inverted and rinsed out before they are filled and capped.
“We have offered to dispatch a courier to pick up the product to take it out for testing by a third-party forensics laboratory, but the consumer has declined this request. This lab would be able to analyze any rodent that got into the product, determine how it entered the container and even inspect the contents of its stomach. This process can take 6-8 weeks to yield conclusive findings. Until we have the opportunity to review the contents, we don’t have a way to do a full investigation.”
