McDonald’s has apologized for reportedly giving a pregnant Canadian woman cleaning agent to drink instead of the latte she ordered.
Sarah Douglas, who is 32-weeks pregnant, told Lethbridge News Now that she ordered a latte Sunday morning at a McDonald’s drive-thru in southern Alberta. She recalled driving down the highway and immediately realizing something was wrong upon taking her first sip of what she thought was coffee.
“I immediately had to put my hazard lights on and pull over and spit it out and rinse my mouth out with…in the door of my vehicle I had some water. I opened up the lid of the coffee and out pours this pungent smell of chemical. It wasn’t a latte at all,” the expecting mother-of-two recounted.
Douglas said the concoction was a washed-out brown color, resembling a liquid that had been left out too long. After putting the lid back on the cup, she reportedly returned to the restaurant and demanded to speak with a supervisor. She said it was then that one of the workers informed her that two cleaning lines were—and remained—attached to the latte machine.
Lethbridge News Now reported that the McDonald’s supervisor showed Douglas the bottle of cleaning solution so she could provide poison control with details about chemical she just consumed.
“Another co-worker of his had also overheard what had been going on, and was a little bit upset at the situation and said that this had happened before,” she alleged. “And she was a little mad that it was occurring again.”
Douglas provided the newspaper with documents she obtained from McDonald’s area brand manager. The documents included a list of what the solution contained: citric acid, phosphoric acid, methyl-trimethyl-3, and 2-butoxyethanol.
While she’s expected to be OK, Douglas said she’s decided to come forward in hopes that something like this doesn’t happen again.
“As a mother, I want to make sure I have a voice and that I’m being heard in terms of the safety of consumers, and how negligence can affect people in such a drastic way,” she told the newspaper.
McDonald’s franchise owner Dan Brown issued a statement where he confirms the mishap and apologizes to Douglas. It reads in part:
The health inspector also visited my restaurant and is not investigating further. McDonald’s is renowned for its food safety protocols and I am sorry that this happened in my restaurant here in Lethbridge. We have taken immediate action to review the proper cleaning procedures with the team and have put additional signage up as an added reminder.
[Featured image: AP]
