AN Accrington dad has claimed his baby son nearly choked on a piece of plastic while eating a packet of crisps.

Eleven-month-old Ollie-James Bain was in his baby walker eating from a packet of Quavers when his dad Steph-en said he swallowed a piece of plastic, which he thinks was in the packet.

Walkers’ parent company, PepsiCo, has pledged to investigate the incident.

But the company said such an incid-ent, if confirmed, would be very rare bec- ause of the state-of-the-art detection equipment it uses in its factory Mr Bain, 23, said he gave Ollie-James the crisps at around 11am on Wedn-esday.

He said: “He started choking. It was the worst thing. His eyes were red, he was struggling to breathe, and his lips were going blue.

“He was trying to cough, or be sick, and it was not happening. I laid him down across my knee and patted his back. He coughed the plastic up and it was on his lips. I pulled it out and he started screaming.”

Mr Bain, who lives with his partner Gemma Griff-iths, 27, and children Katie Louise, eight, and Jack, six, in Wordsworth Road, cont-acted Walkers later that day.

He said: “They said they will investigate. They want us to send the product back.

“We want to make other parents aware of what’s happ- ened.”

Mr Bain said he is certain the plastic fell out of the packet, saying he cleaned the baby walker immed-iately before giving Ollie-James the crisps.

He added: “I’m 100per cent sure there was nothing there. The plastic could not have come from anywhere else.”

A PepsiCo spokesman said: “The safety of consumers is always our number one concern and we take issues like this very seriously.

“We have robust quality control procedures at all of our sites, including state-of-the-art detection equipment on the production line to prevent any external obj-ects going into our product.

“We are working with Mr Bain to resolve the matter, and have asked for the object, and packet, to be sent to us so that we can conduct a full investigat-ion.”