Pepsi admitted an employee contaminated its products with AIDS.
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This Facebook post wrongly claims that a Pepsi employee contaminated the company's products.
No, a Pepsi employee didn't contaminate the company's products
Sifting through the family photos, news stories, "personal news" and scams that populate our social media accounts is not for the faint-hearted, or for people trying to cut down on screen time. Among the updates from friends and hot takes from pundits, there are often grim, fear-mongering warnings that are just, well, wrong.
"There’s news from the police," reads one such Facebook post from Jan. 9. "Its (sic) an urgent message for all. For the next few weeks please do not drink any product from PEPSI like Pepsi, Tropicana juice, Slice, 7up etc. A worker from the company has admitted that he added his blood contaminated with AIDS. Watch MDTV. It was on yesterday on Sky News. Please forward and warn others too."
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
"This is false," PepsiCo said in an email after PolitiFact wrote seeking more information about the claim.
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Sky News did not respond to an email asking if the network had aired a segment, like the Facebook post claims, but we couldn’t find any evidence of such a story on its website. In fact, we couldn’t find any credible articles about this so-called "urgent message."
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But for what it’s worth: You can’t get HIV from consuming food handled by someone with HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Even if the food contained small amounts of HIV-infected blood or semen, exposure to the air, heat from cooking, and stomach acid would destroy the virus."
We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
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Our Sources
Facebook post, Jan. 9, 2019
Email correspondence with Gina Anderson, PepsiCO, Jan. 18, 2019
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV Transmission, visited Jan. 22, 2019
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No, a Pepsi employee didn't contaminate the company's products
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