OTTAWA — Police and food safety authorities say three local instances of baby formula tampering appear to be isolated and that Ottawa baby food is safe.

A nine-month-old Outaouais infant became mildly ill recently after ingesting Nestlé powdered baby formula purchased at Barrhaven’s Your Independent Grocer on Strandherd Drive and contaminated with flour.

Officials from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Nestlé carried out an extensive search Friday of all baby food products in stores within an 11-kilometre radius of the Barrhaven store. They found two more flour-contaminated Nestlé formula canisters at the nearby Sobey’s on Greenbank Road. The pull-back, foil seals on all three canisters appeared to be resealed.

Friday night, the agency issued a public advisory cautioning consumers and parents to inspect 900-gram canisters of Nestlé Good Start Iron Fortified Infant Formula for possible tampering with the foil seals.

By Saturday afternoon, Ottawa police and a CFIA official said no further cases had been discovered or reported. CFIA spot checks continue.

“The main message that we have is to make sure that consumers in the area are aware of the issue and be very vigilant and check their product, any formula,” Garfield Balsom, a CFIA food safety and recall specialist, said Saturday.

Agency laboratory tests on the suspected flour have yet to be completed.

Police, meanwhile, suspect the formula was probably switched in August by someone who carried out the act within the stores, rather than during manufacturing and distribution.

“It looks like somebody deliberately took the formula out of the can, put in some flour and put it back on the shelf,” said investigating officer Const. Dave Brennan. Unless additional evidence surfaces, he does not expect the investigation to continue.

Nestlé officials could not be reached Saturday, but Brennan said the company switched to metal-lid cans in May.

A similar case occurred around Kingston in 2007. A man was later sentenced to about 70 months in prison after families purchased two of three 900-gram canisters of Nestlé Good Start Iron Fortified baby formula which he had replaced with flour. He then returned them to a Wal-Mart for a $60 refund to fuel his narcotics habit.

The Kingston Whig-Standard reported an eight-month-old and an 11-month-old were sickened, but suffered no lasting harm. The 23-year-old man, himself the father of a baby, admitted replacing the formula with baking flour.

If a suspicious food product is found, the CFIA recommends: isolate the food, notify authorities and keep information regarding the product on hand.

For more information, individuals also can call Nestlé Consumer Services at 1-800-387-5536 (8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET, Monday to Friday and weekends from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET) or CFIA at 1-800-442-2342/TTY 1-800-465-7735 (8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET, Monday to Friday).