Champagne Recalled Over Ecstasy Contamination Fears
Champagne drinkers might want to think carefully about picking up their next glass of bubbly, as it's warned that a number of bottles have been contaminated with potentially lethal doses of ecstasy.
According to a food safety watchdog there have been a number of reports of MDMA poisoning among people who drank from bottles of Moët & Chandon Ice Impérial champagne last month.
11 people have fallen seriously ill and one man has died after a number of incidents involving the three-litre double-magnum bottles in Germany and the Netherlands.
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Harald Georg Z, 52, died after drinking a glass of champagne while at a restaurant in the Upper Palatinate region, with eight others poisoned at the gathering, which was being held to celebrate a friend's appearance on a TV dating show, The Times reports.
Elsewhere, in the Netherlands four people were taken ill after drinking from bottles of the contaminated champagne, which they had ordered online.
Authorities saying the bottle which the deceased man drank from contained 100g of MDMA - a thousand times the dose of a single ecstasy pill.
'Touching and/or drinking the contents of the bottles is life-threatening,' the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority said in a statement, adding 'Even dipping a fingertip in the liquid and tasting it can lead to serious health problems, even without swallowing. Taking a small sip can be fatal.'
The Times of Malta reports that the bottles are understood to have been tampered with by drug smugglers, with the champagne emptied out and replace with pure liquid MDMA. German police have said they believe the fatal bottle was likely delivered to the restaurant by mistake.
However in a notice posted by the Dutch food standards agency, it was warned that authorities were still investigating how the MDMA-laced bottles came to be sold, and could not confirm how the drug got into the bottles.
'It is not known how the MDMA ended up in these bottles,' the statement read. 'The [authority] is therefore unable to estimate whether there are any more of these bottles containing the hazardous substance in circulation. It cannot be ruled out that there are other bottles of the same brand in circulation that also contain MDMA.'
Authorities have said that people should exercise caution when drinking double-magnum Moet & Chandon Ice Impérial bottles with the lot number LAJ7QAB6780004.
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Topics: Food and Drink, Netherlands, Germany, Drugs
Hannah Smith