Three safety warnings this week: the year on Hoogvliet's pineapple cream cheese is printed a year too late

The Dutch food and consumer product safety authority issued three safety warnings on 7 and 8 September, and one of them fails in an unusual way. Hoogvliet's own-brand pineapple cream cheese, 125 grams, carries a best-before date printed as 28-09-2027, but that year is wrong: it should read 2026. This is not a product that is about to expire, it is a product whose printed date is a full year too generous. The barcode is 8710624366728 and the official instruction is not to eat it.A safety warning behaves differently from a promotion: nothing reminds you of a deadline, it does not appear on the pages you normally read, and all three of these notices exist in Dutch only. That is the practical reason to put them side by side in one place, with the identifying numbers spelled out, rather than expecting anyone to check an authority's website on an ordinary Tuesday.

It is worth separating from the other two because those are identified by batch codes, while this one can be spotted by the year alone - and if you do not spot it, the tub in your fridge looks like something that keeps until next autumn. The sum has one step: take the 28-09-2027 printed on the pack, subtract a year, and you get 28-09-2026, which is the real date. Subtract today from that, and the days left are what this cheese actually has, not the three hundred and something you thought.

• Hoogvliet pineapple cream cheese 125 g, barcode 8710624366728: the pack says 28-09-2027, the year should be 2026, and the instruction is not to eat it. (source 1)
• Bakker van der Akker raisin egg cakes, 4-pack 200 g, sold at Dirk van den Broek, barcode 8710871388870, production code 63136, best before 14/09/2026: may contain small metal particles. (source 2)
• Groovy Baby cardboard book 'I Spy a Fly!', published by Make Believe Ideas, ISBN 9781836422600: the fly's wings on the last page can come off when pulled, a choking hazard if a child puts them in the mouth. (source 3)
• That book was sold in TK Maxx stores from September 2024 until August 2026, which is a full twenty-four months on the shelf. (source 3)

The second number you can work with is on the book. Its sales window is twenty-four months, so the copy to check is not the one bought this month but any copy brought home from TK Maxx since autumn 2024 - including ones given away as presents. The test is ISBN 9781836422600 and the fly on the final page: the described fault is wings that detach when pulled, so pull them gently yourself rather than waiting for a child to find out.

Two of the three are supermarket own-brand or supermarket-sold items, and each is identified differently: the cheese by its year, the egg cakes by production code 63136 and the 14/09/2026 date, the book by its ISBN. The authority's pages are in Dutch only and the notices say no more than do not eat and do not use; refund details sit on each retailer's own page, with the egg cakes pointing to Dirk van den Broek and the cheese to Hoogvliet. Every current warning is listed by date on the authority's overview page. (source 4)

Hokimi field note: all three were issued on 7 and 8 September, which puts them in the category of things that may be in your kitchen right now rather than a historical record. Check the barcodes and the ISBN first, then decide what goes back to the shop.