Heineken recalls 3 million bottles

THE Heineken brewery last night recalled more than 3 million bottles of lager after glass was found in one of them. It said splinters were discovered in a 33cl bottle of its Export strong lager during a check yesterday at a brewery in the Netherlands.

A defect had caused the top of a bottle to break and all batches containing green bottles made of the same glass were being recalled, a spokesman said. Eight batches were affected and Export drinkers in all parts of Britain should be on their guard.

Batch numbers are found in the bottom-left corner of the label on the back of the bottles and anyone with any of the following numbers - 3200, 3201, 3211, 3214, 3223, 3224, 3231 and 3232 - should return the lager to the outlet from where it was bought.

All the traced bottles would be destroyed, the spokesman said. He emphasised that no one had complained about finding glass in a bottle. The bottles were distributed from Amsterdam recently. Batches also went to Sweden, Hungary, Hong Kong, Israel, Finland, Austria and Prince Edward Island in Canada.

Heineken said it was recalling 3.12 million bottles shipped in the past two weeks. Of those, probably 32,000 bottles contained splinters. The brewery was confident that all affected stock had been identified.