Winnipeg couple bugged by beetles in oatmeal

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This article was published 04/01/2018 (2979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg couple is thinking of swearing off oatmeal cookies.

Twice in the span of nine months Randy and Barby Neumann have opened a package of oatmeal — Barby loves baking with it — only to find it crawling with grain beetles.

The first time they had to vacate their apartment for eight hours while their place was fumigated at an out-of-pocket cost of $120.

The latest incident was Thursday morning. “I started screaming. ‘They’re back!'” said Barby.

First she saw a few of the pests on the kitchen counter. She had a bag of oatmeal in the cupboard but thought they couldn’t be from there because the bag was still sealed.

Well, apparently grain beetles — reddish-brown in colour, two-to-three millimetres in length and with disproportionately large eyes — have flattened bodies that allow them to squeeze through the tiniest crevices.

“I opened up the bag and it just floored me. There were thousands of them crawling around in there,” she said. “I thought, ‘That’s it for baking today.'”

 

They got the bag from Randy’s 82-year-old mother, who unwittingly passed it on after receiving it in a food hamper from the Christmas Cheer Board. Randy shudders to think what might have happened had his mother opened it.

“With her already having had a mild heart attack, she doesn’t need that,” he said.

‘Usually from the homeowner’: packaging company

The brand is called Harvest Time and was packaged at W. H. Escott Co. Ltd. in Winnipeg.

Escott marketing manager Ed Neufeld said the company packaged the oats for the Christmas Cheer Board about a week before Christmas.

“There’s nothing worse than pouring milk on your cereal and seeing bugs. They float to the top.”–Noel White, research scientist with Agri-Food and Agriculture Canada

”The product was very fresh and we haven’t had any other complaints,” he said.

Neufeld suggested people may unknowingly transport the grain beetle into their house and the grain beetle then finds its way into the pantry.

“It’s usually from the homeowner,” he maintained.

Grain beetle eggs can come from a variety of sources, said Noel White, a research scientist with Agri-Food and Agriculture Canada. Eggs can get past the supplier and hatch inside the packaging, or a package can be infiltrated from another product in the retail chain.

Grain beetles can also be a problem in pet stores where they feed on dried cat and dog food, he said.

Once grain beetles find their way into a pantry, they can infest other grain-based products from cake-mixes to cereals to crackers, White said.

“It’s not uncommon. You especially see it in apartment buildings. If one person gets them, they tend to move through the walls along the pipes from one kitchen to the next,” he said, noting it takes 25 to 28 days for a female to hatch a generation, or about 300-400 eggs.

“Once they get going, they just soar.”

Beetles don’t bite, not harmful to eat

The pantry pests attack stored grains, cereals, flour, spices, and other processed food products. The biggest threat they pose is of infestation and spoiling food. They don’t bite and the ones in the Neumann apartment didn’t fly. Ingesting the insect or its eggs is not harmful.

White has had three infestations in his home and now puts grain-based foods such as cereals and cake mixes into air-tight containers.

“There’s nothing worse than pouring milk on your cereal and seeing bugs. They float to the top,” he said.

Freezing a cereal-based product for 24 hours will kill any grain beetles or eggs, he said.

White doesn’t think people need to call an exterminator if they find grain beetles. Homeowners should empty their pantry completely and vacuum shelves, floors and corners. The area must then be washed with soapy water. People should not use bleach, ammonia or pesticides as they can be dangerous if in contact with food.

“People should be aware of this,” Randy said.

The Neumanns’ first infestation last spring was from a bag of Quaker Oats.

Randy phoned the Quaker headquarters in Chicago, which told him they would reimburse him the money for the oats, he said. He decided it wasn’t worth the $5 to go through the process.

Instead, he took the bag back to Save-On-Foods in St. James where he purchased it. They provided him with a gift certificate for $50 and said they would remove the product from its shelves.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said consumers with a complaint should contact the agency either by email via its website, or by phone at 1-800-442-2342.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca