RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) ― A Brazilian consumer defense agency said it’s found past-expiration food in the hotels where national soccer teams from Italy and England will stay during the World Cup.
The Rio de Janeiro state agency said on its website late Monday that the inspections were part of an effort to enforce food safety codes ahead of next month’s tournament.
At the Hotel Portobello where Italy will stay, inspectors discovered 25 kilograms of pasta, shrimp, salmon and margarine kept past its expiration date.
Inspectors there tossed another 24 kilograms of food because there was no visible safe date on its label.
Team England will stay at the Royal Tulip Hotel. A search there turned up 2 kilograms of butter, Parma ham and salmon too old for consumption.
The agency also said both hotels didn’t provide condoms for sale at cost, nor information about sexually transmitted diseases, as required by law.
Brazil prosecutors try to halt government World Cup ads
SAO PAULO (AP) ― Federal prosecutors in Brazil have asked a court to suspend the airing of government advertisements touting the benefits that the World Cup will bring to the country, saying the ads are “absurdly divorced from reality.”
The federal attorney general’s office in Goias state presented a civil demand late Monday to a judge calling for the commercials to be pulled immediately. The ads compare the government’s spending on stadiums for the tournament to investment in public transportation or education.
Prosecutor Ailton Benedito said that “besides not coinciding with the reality, the content of the publicity campaign reaches the collective unconsciousness with the subliminal message that the federal government has fulfilled its promises.”
Government officials did not immediately respond on Tuesday to telephone calls and email messages from the Associated Press seeking comment.
