Little Hug fruit juice with Mold (Bellafonte, PA)

(Since May reports of mold in juices have been coming into ConsumerBell, for more background and to see some original complaints CLICK HERE)

First reports of health issues related to Asbestos started showing up in medical research during the 1940′s, by 1951 asbestos companies removed all scientific references to cancer before publications and by 1971 class-action lawsuits were entering courts in thousands. By 1989 the Environmental Protection agency (EPA) finally decided to ban asbestos for not being safe– to this day seven million fibers of asbestos is allowerd per liter of drinking water in work environments. Estimates believe that 27.5 million people were occupationally exposed to asbestos in the U.S alone. [41]

It took almost 50 years to ban something harmful despite warnings to the manufacturers, results in lab tests, or tips into governmental agencies. Employees and workers in asbestos filled environments were dropping like flies in the 50′s and yet we couldn’t ban it sooner?

For a good half of the century asbestos was everywhere and to this day Mesothelioma is one of the biggest class action groups that continue to grow and most expensive keyword on the internet. Why?  Because Mesothelioma is a deadly and rare cancer that kills quickly and is directly linked to asbestos exposure.

Every day that a Mesothelioma lawsuit enters a courtroom, a corporation feels grateful–grateful that they had all this time to save up money, collect interest, and polish their legal strategy

Unfortunately for consumers many people die never knowing what they were entitled to or why, most of these people are low income, in rural areas, or are single-parents.  Why?  Because time is money but you can’t buy time.  Consumers that have the luxury of time on their hands can do research, the others be victims.

MOLD COMPLAINTS

Growing up I could never eat Otter Pops or certain kinds of gum or juice, it would make my throat burn.  It wasn’t until middle school that we had figured out there was one particular type of corn syrup that I was allergic to. Several different products yet one common ingredient almost to a particular brand: corn syrup. As a kid I couldn’t even drink Little Hugs for the same reason, and some part of me think this might later be a blessing in disguise.

Most moldy-juice complaints have been for Capri Sun Kiwi-Strawberry pouches.  As of this morning another product has entered the ring, Little Hugs, owned by American Beverage Company.

Little Hug fruit juice with Mold (Bellafonte, PA)

MOLDY JUICE IS NOT JUST A “JUICE THING” –  IT’S A SOCIETY VS. CORPORATION THING

Within minutes of launching ConsumerBell we got our first complaint, to be specific we got our first Capri Sun mold issue in just a few weeks of being up.  This told us two things 1) we were onto something 2) If people are finding us and our traffic was beyond minimal, than this was in fact a HUGE problem.  Since most complaints we get are from people who have already tried for a solution with the product maker, it makes us wonder, what do corporations do with all these complaints? Plan for consumers not knowing better, having the time, or having a place to talk to one another?

Since our launch we have been threatened by large corporations like Vonage not to publish findings from working with consumer issues, we have had companies like RedBox happily work to correct a wrong doing giving refunds, and there are still stacks of complaints against DirecTV in our consumer research department making us think that misleading, even if legally intact, is being over done on customers.

Kraft calls issues with Capri Sun juice "Unpleasant but not a safety issue"

MESOTHELIOMA AND CORPORATE EPIDEMICS

Again mesothelioma is one of the most sought after words on the internet.  Why?  Because anyone with Mesothelioma is nearly a cookie cutter, easy win, class action case so much so that there are entire sites and organizations dedicated to its fight.  Mesothelioma is a asbestos linked cancer, so strongly linked some attorneys have online forms because cases can be pushed through swiftly. Since the industrial revolution there have been several epidemics inflicted, knowingly, by corporations.  In my own home, my father was injecting HIV+ blood products for years by Bayer Pharmaceutical until nearly half his friends died in a six-month period and we learned in court that

CDC and FDA warnings were not only ignored but sometimes disappeared for “charitable contributions.”

Big atrocities happen at the hand of corporate America and it’s the families working for these corporations, living minimally, and without time to properly research and connect with one another that get hurt the most. These epidemics will continue to happen but we pray with the help of social media and ConsumerBell that the time between an issue and action becomes smaller.

Epidemic                                           Years for action

Asbestos (1940-1990):                           40+

HIV in blood supply (1982-1992)              10

Next Epidemic (?)                                      2

To define the moldy juice problem an official epidemic would be drastic but not too far away with the biggest difference being we don’t know the health effects yet that can be brewing. Looking at ConsumerBell’s traffic (where is comes from, how much, search keywords) we know we still have more time to grow but we can also estimate how big a problem is by what makes it to our door. Right now what’s interesting is that we are getting complaints about TWO different kinds of similarly packaged, stored, and tasting juices but different companies which is beginning to make us believe there is a common ingredient that is an issue.

Kraft said early in the beginning that any mold present was a packaging issue or “user failure” by allowing air in and breed mold cultivation.  Then chunks of molded fruit pieces showed up…

then slimy residues showed up. More pictures, more complaints, more items in supposedly safely packaged fruit juice. One rep even bragged that juice from Kraft is ran through a metal detector machine. Where’s the mold detector?

WHAT ABOUT OUR KIDS?

What scares me the most is the group of people consuming these spoiled and molded juices are kids and often they either don’t understand the juice is spoiled or they don’t mention anything to parents when home. Even scarier is we don’t know how many kids have consumed spoiled juice and even if what this slimy, chunky stuff would or could do to a person if they ingested it. All I know is something is going on and its not just one company or one flavor anymore, there is something in many types of juices causing mold and it will not be as easy to solve as new packaging or metal detectors–there is something in artificial juices and what we don’t know is what it is doing to people’s bodies.

Here’s what you can do to keep up to date on the mold issue:

Got a Tip? Connect with us anyway above or email us (info) at (consumerbell) dot (com).

 

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