No, Cadbury and Pepsi products were not infected with HIV
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on March 5, 2019 at 19:06
- 3 min read
- By AFP Canada
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An online post shared on Facebook and Twitter warns users not to eat Cadbury products for the next few weeks, due to the presence of a man’s HIV contaminated blood in the British company’s chocolate. The post features a photo of the alleged culprit upon his arrest.
The post began to circulate in early 2018 and resurfaced in early 2019. The text and photos are almost identical to those used in earlier posts about Pepsi products.
This hoax is false on several levels. On a medical level, HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can only be transmitted directly by a living carrier, usually a human. Therefore, consuming food and beverages such as Cadbury chocolate or Pepsi soda, even if they had been infected with HIV, would not result in contracting the virus, as the CDC and Public Health Agency of Canada explain here and here.
Depending on the post, the information is said to have been “shown yesterday” either on the BBC or on Sky News, two British news networks. However, a search on their respective websites found no stories involving Pepsi or Cadbury and the HIV virus.
Although the photo used to illustrate the post is real, the man escorted by two Interpol officers was not arrested for contaminating food or soda products. He is Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, one of the alleged masterminds behind the deadly April 14, 2014 bombing of a bus station in the Abuja suburb of Nyanya, in Nigeria. He is pictured upon his arrival in Nigeria following his extradition from Sudan. The picture was released to media, including AFP, on July 15, 2014 from the Nigerian National Information Center.
The entire scene of his arrival can also be seen on the video below.
On Twitter, Cadbury’s South Africa branch also pointed out the hoax’s inaccuracy.
The hoax circulating about a Cadbury employee contaminating chocolate with HIV infected blood is exactly that - a false hoax.
— Cadbury Dairy Milk (@Cadbury_SA) June 8, 2018
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