BALTIMORE — A routine trip to buy baby formula turned into a frightening discovery for a Frederick County mother.
Alivia Council says a container of infant formula she purchased from the Walmart in Nottingham was not filled with formula at all, but flour.
Council says she didn’t realize something was wrong until later that night, when her boyfriend opened the container to make a bottle for their 11-month-old son, Thomas.
“So he opened it up, it was halfway gone and he was like, I thought that you had already used it for something.” Council said.
The baby drank some of the bottle before tossing it aside. That’s when the couple began to question what was inside the container.
“I mixed it with water and it turned into dough and I was livid,” Council said.
She says her mind went to worst-case scenarios.
“It’s E. coli, salmonella, there’s so many bacteria that are inside of raw flour that have to get cooked off, and I just fed it to my child,” she said. “Immediately I’m blaming myself as a mom.”
Council later posted about the experience on TikTok, warning other parents to carefully inspect formula containers before check-out.
“Why would you try to replace formula with flour and think you were going to get away with it?” she said in one video. “You literally just tried to poison my child.”
Council says she returned to the Walmart.
"I told them I wanted to look over the cameras to be able to press charges against whoever did this," Council said.
She also reached out to local police.
"Ma'am, I understand your frustrations. I have children too and if Walmart isn't gonna work with you, this is gonna be extremely hard to prove against them," Council said.
The mom turned to the Food and Drug Administration, and Maryland Food Compliance to report the incident. Council says she was advised to keep some of the flour as evidence.
"They understand that Walmart is not supposed to accept a return and put it back on the shelf, so they're not suspecting Walmart. They were suspecting that a mother just needed milk for her child and was in the store and emptied out the formula and replaced it with flour. Now the reason why I don't think that that is true, because if you're going through the effort to steal formula, you would just steal the whole tin," Council said.
Her son did not suffer serious health complications, though she says he experienced flushed cheeks and diarrhea for two to three days following the incident.
In a statement, Walmart said:
"The safety of our customers and their families is a top priority. That’s why Walmart has a strict policy to not resell infant formula that has been returned or exchanged. In this case, we worked with the customer to offer an exchange, coordinated with the local health department and reported the issue to the manufacturer."
Council says she holding on to her receipt, believing the transaction number could help determine whether the container was previously returned and possibly placed back on the shelf.
For now, she says she is sharing her story in hopes it prevents another family from going through the same scare.
“We try to do everything right,” she said. “It was disappointing for that to happen.”
