Goiás Court Orders Italac to Pay Over Insect in Dairy Drink

Judge Lucas de Mendonça Lagares of Goiânia’s 10th Special Civil Court issued the decision after a consumer bought two cartons of the product on January 7 while they were still within their stated expiry period. She opened one carton, poured the drink into a glass and found dark material in it. After removing it with a spoon, she identified the material as an insect.

The consumer recorded the material in photographs and video, and according to her lawyer, Nathallya do Prado Alves, did not drink any of the beverage. The court nevertheless awarded R$3,000 for moral damages and R$11.98 in material damages, corresponding to the price of the two drinks.

The judgment referred to decisions by Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice and Goiás’s Special Courts’ Uniformisation Panel. Those decisions hold that a foreign object in food can justify compensation even when the consumer does not ingest the product.

Italac argued that there was no proof of a manufacturing defect and that the images had been taken only after the package was opened. The company said this made it impossible to establish where the material had entered the product. It also argued that the insect’s intact condition suggested that it had been introduced after the seal was broken, and submitted a technical opinion on the manufacturing process.

The judge rejected those arguments. He found that the technical opinion examined the production batch in general rather than the specific beverage bought by the consumer. The company also failed, in the court’s view, to prove that the consumer alone was responsible for the incident. A request for expert examination of the source of the contamination, the timing of its entry and the storage conditions was denied because the documentary evidence was considered sufficient.

The lawyer told g1 that the fragments could not be assigned to a particular insect because the material was divided, so the case referred to it as a “foreign object”. Italac was contacted for comment and had not replied by the publication’s latest update. The company initially filed an appeal, later withdrew it and paid the award, according to Alves. The case was subsequently closed and archived.