“HiPP is the victim of blackmail,” the company said in a press release after jars of baby food contaminated with rat poison were discovered over the weekend in Austria and two neighboring countries. Austria’s food safety agency AGES issued a warning and at least one supermarket chain began a recall. Authorities are now trying to identify who is responsible.
What is known so far
Prosecutors are investigating attempted blackmail, police in Ingolstadt told DW. The Ingolstadt unit is handling the case because HiPP is based in nearby Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm. Police said five contaminated jars were found across three countries.
The first jar was located near Eisenstadt in Burgenland, Austria’s easternmost province. Initial tests showed the 190-gram jar of carrot with potato had been tainted with rat poison. Officials are still searching for a second suspected contaminated jar in the same area.
Two more poisoned jars were found in a shop in Brno in the Czech Republic. Prosecutors said both jars bore a white sticker and a red circle, matching a marking described in an extortion email; AGES’s warning also referenced that marking. Contaminated jars were additionally found in Dunajská Streda in southern Slovakia.
How to tell if a HiPP jar might be affected
All the affected jars had damaged lids and did not make the usual “pop” sound when opened. Baby food jars are filled hot and sealed with screw lids; as the contents cool a vacuum forms, and the audible pop on opening indicates the seal was intact. HiPP says the contaminations were criminal manipulations carried out outside factory premises.
Ingolstadt police urged consumers to listen for the familiar popping sound, smell the contents, and if anything seems unusual not to feed the food to children and to contact local police immediately. HiPP issued similar advice.
Similar cases in the past
There are precedents of extortion linked to tampered baby food. In 1988–89, Rodney Whitchelo, later revealed to be a police officer with London’s Scotland Yard, tampered with jars and returned them to shelves, demanding £4 million; he was caught and jailed for 17 years. That era’s incidents contributed to the adoption of pop-seal lids.
In 2017 in Friedrichshafen, southwestern Germany, several jars were contaminated with antifreeze in potentially lethal doses; the perpetrator tried to extort about €12 million from a supermarket chain and is serving a 10-year sentence. In the UK in 2018, a blackmailer who placed metal pieces in jars and threatened wider contamination demanded £1.4 million in Bitcoin; surveillance footage led to his arrest and a 14-year sentence. In 2025, Polish police arrested a man accused of trying to extort money by threatening to poison baby food; no contaminated products were found and the case has not reached a verdict.
Why baby food is targeted
Extortionists often target baby food because threats to infants attract intense public attention and put maximum pressure on companies. Baby food’s wide retail availability also gives offenders many access points.
Industry safeguards
Baby food is subject to strict controls: manufacturers limit factory access, use tamper-evident packaging and batch numbers to enable targeted recalls, and many retailers have increased store surveillance to deter or document tampering.
This article was originally published in German.