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Nasty Things Found In Food & Drink

Following on the general theme:

Man says metal found in Taco Bell tortilla



By Bob Stiles
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, April 20, 2004


Taco Bell is investigating a Greensburg man's claim that he got more than meat, tomatoes and lettuce in a tortilla he bought at one of the company's restaurants on Route 30 in Hempfield Township.

Jeff Sano said Monday that he found a piece of metal about an inch long in one of three soft tacos that he took home Friday night from the Hempfield Plaza business, west of Greensburg.

"We are investigating the matter," said Laurie Schalow, spokeswoman for the fast-food chain based in Irvine, Calif. "From what the manager said of the piece of metal, it didn't look like anything we used in our restaurant, so there's no way to say how it got into the food."

Sano said he was in the process of warming a taco when he discovered the object.

"I threw the first one in the microwave, unwrapped it and put hot sauce on it. Then I wrapped it up tight, and the metal poked through the center," he said.

"It kind of shocked me. I wonder how it got in there."

Sano said he returned to the restaurant that night and showed a manager the metal object.

"I said, 'There's a piece of metal in one of my tacos,'" he recalled. "She said, 'I'll make you another one.'"

Sano said he told her he didn't want another taco and got his money back.

But he remained concerned about how the object got in his food. So over the weekend, he called a toll-free number for Taco Bell that he saw at the restaurant, he said.

"All I've gotten is a busy signal," Sano said yesterday afternoon. "Now I'm waiting for the district manager to call me."

Yesterday, neither a shift manager nor an assistant manager at the restaurant would answer questions about Sano's claim. They referred calls to their district manager, who didn't return several requests for comment.

Schalow said Taco Bell, which operates about 7,000 restaurants nationwide, planned to ask Sano to allow the company to look at the object.

About the frequency of such claims, Schalow said, "Not many, but they do happen from time to time."

Taco Bell is part of Yum! Brands Inc., which also owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Long John Silvers, among other enterprises.

At this point, Schalow said her company was unsure what to make of Sano's claim.

"Sometimes they're factual, sometimes they're fraudulent. A thorough investigation will have to take place," she said.

Liz Jeffries, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Agriculture, which is involved in food inspection, didn't return a call.

Sano, a caseworker for the Westmoreland County Blind Association, said he only reported the matter to Taco Bell. He said he believes the metal was in his food by mistake.

"I think it was just an accident," Sano said.

All he wants to know is how the metal got into his meal, he said.

"I didn't take a bite. I'm not injured. I'm not trying to sue them or anything. I just like to know where it came from," Sano said.

And he still has the evidence.

"I kept them. I kept the bag," Sano said.
Click to expand...

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/westmoreland/s_190180.html

Emps
 
It's a delicacy someplaces, you know!

High-flying frog stows away in in-flight salad

WELLINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) - An airline passenger was given a nasty fright when a frog with a taste for adventure stowed away in her in-flight salad, New Zealand authorities said on Tuesday.

The passenger discovered the airborne amphibian perched on a slice of cucumber while on a Qantas flight from Melbourne to Wellington in February.

"Naturally there was a bit of consternation by the passenger who called back the attendant," Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry quarantine general manager Fergus Small said.

The flight attendant removed the salad and the 4 cm (1.6 inch) whistling tree frog, which was killed by quarantine staff when the aircraft landed.

While frogs had been known to hitch rides in the cargo holds of aircraft, it was the first time the Quarantine Service was aware of one being found in a meal, Small said.

Qantas was not immediately available for comment but a spokesman told The New Zealand Herald newspaper the airline had since changed its lettuce supplier and introduced "additional procedures into the salad supply process."


05/03/04 20:44

© Copyright Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.
 
Re: It's a delicacy someplaces, you know!

lopaka said:
The flight attendant removed the salad and the 4 cm (1.6 inch) whistling tree frog, which was killed by quarantine staff when the aircraft landed.
Click to expand...

That's a lot more meat than you get in most airline meals.

But couldn't they have sent it to a zoo or something?
 
Woman bites the bullet at Costco

Original article here:

Wednesday, May 5, 2004 (AP)
Costco checks hot dog after woman claims she bit into bullet at Irvine store
(05-05) 17:43 PDT IRVINE, Calif. (AP) --

Costco workers checked the merchandise at its food court and found nothing out of the ordinary after a woman claimed she bit into a bullet while eating a hot dog, the company's chief executive officer said Wednesday.

Police interviewed workers and opened all of the approximately 25 remaining hot dog packages after Olivia Chanes, 31, reported the incident, CEO Jim Sinegal said.

"We checked everything thoroughly," Sinegal said by phone from Costco's corporate office near Seattle. "Obviously, it's regrettable. ... The question is when could something like this happen."

Chanes told police she was eating the hot dog Sunday afternoon at the store in Irvine, about 40 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, when she bit into something hard and found what officers determined was a live 9 mm round.

Chanes, of Mission Viejo, later went to the hospital complaining of stomach pains and X-rays found what appeared to be another bullet in her stomach, The Orange County Register reported. Doctors told her the metal round would eventually pass out of her system, the newspaper said.

The company CEO said he was not aware of any legal claim filed by Chanes.
Police and the Orange County Health Department are investigating the
incident.

The Hebrew National hot dogs are carefully prepared, go through a screening process and pass through a metal detector before they leave the factory -- making it extremely unlikely the bullets entered before distribution, Sinegal said.

"This is such an extraordinary thing," he said. "It's difficult to understand how this could have happened."

------------------

Costco = large North American chain of bulk stores, similar to Sam's Club. If you want a 10 lb. container of mayonnaise or a year's supply of tampons, that's the place to go.
 
I have an unfortunate tendency to find 'things' in my food. Here is a list of things I've discovered over the years-

- A bleach-blonde hair in Kit-Kat chocolate( I was going to send it back, but my brother ate it!).

- Half a caterpillar in frozen sweetcorn.

- A weevel in a baked bean.

- A blue nylon bristle in an onion ring.

- A tiny crab in a mussle.

- A grubby green M&M in a packet on Minstrels( I've still got that one and I'm definatly sending it back)!

I think I'm doomed.
 
SB: Always send them back - a girl at my mum's school sent her mouldy Mars bar back and got a whole box in return (and it was a box of unmouldy ones too - probably hand't been spat on too ;) ).

Emps
 
I have found

- a piece of copper wire in a Marks and Spencer white loaf (I received a £25 voucher for that one).

-bird droppings in Alpen (£10 for that).:cross eye

-mouldy chocolate (got a whole box of bars back).

-a piece of overall in a pork pie (got loads of meat products).

-a piece of metal in a Mcdonalds burger (got a free meal and a cuddly toy). Apparently this is quite common as the spatulas they use sometimes scrape the metal surface off the grill. They told me they were researching a new plastic spatula and didn't seem that bothered by it!!

It does pay to complain about finding stuff in your food.
 
When I was a supermarket manager we had product recalls due to 'things' being found on a regular basis. One I particually remember was bits of metal in Jammie Dodgers. Usually these things, such as Elffriends copper wire, bird droppings, bits of overall, my blue bristle and bits of randon metal, are pieces of machinery, packaging, cleaning equipment, or factory debris.
An unfortunate side effect of our reliance on industrially pre-prepared and packaged food.
I also used to avoid unpacking bananas and grapes. Inanimate things I can cope with, but tropical creepy-crawlies?
:eek:
 
I once found some flakes of broken glass in a can of some Chef Boy-ar-dee product (ravioli maybe?). I didn't think to report it, as I was probably only about 13 at the time. :cross eye
 
my ma found a piece of rusty nail in a Walls banger a few years back. She complained and a man from walls came and delivered a large box of meat products.
i once found what i thought was a 'tash hair in an M&S sandwich and i took it back within the hour. They were most apologetic, gave me a replacement buttie and several vouchers to spend at my leisure
I'm good at complaining.....:eek:
 
I once found a large clump of human hair in some crab sticks, I think it must have been caught in the machinery at the factory and then compressed and folded into the inside of the stick.

Thankfully I was making a Ramen type dish and it came out and bubbled up to the top while I was boiling them, then I saw it and the whole thing went behind a bush in the garden:cross eye
 
My sister found what was suspisciously like a pube in a British Rail (as it was) egg mayonnaise sarnie.:cross eye
 
panadeineforte said:
Did it stick in her throat elfriend?
Sure it was mayo?
Click to expand...

A case of smeg mayonnaise....

....Taxi.....
 
Doesn't really qualify as "vegetable soup", does i

Woman Finds Mouse in Soup on Mother's Day

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) - A woman out for an early Mother's Day lunch at the Cracker Barrel restaurant found a mouse in her vegetable soup. The woman had already eaten some of the soup on Saturday when she scooped up the mouse.

The discovery prompted the chain to immediately halt the serving of vegetable soup at the Newport News restaurant as well as nationally, a corporate spokeswoman said Monday.

``As soon as the problem was discovered, we stopped serving the product,'' Julie Davis said from Cracker Barrel's suburban Nashville, Tenn., headquarters.

The mouse, less than 2 inches long, is being tested to determine whether it got into the soup at the store or was already in a soup package when it arrived from a vendor.

``We want to know how this happened,'' Davis said.

The Newport News store had received its regular pest control service on April 13, she said.

Davis said Cracker Barrel deemed the discovery so serious, President Donald M. Turner was involved within hours of the discovery to direct the company's response.

``I can't stress enough how seriously we view this,'' Davis said.

Information from: Daily Press


05/10/04 18:54

© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
 
Re: Doesn't really qualify as "vegetable soup", do

lopaka said:
Woman Finds Mouse in Soup on Mother's Day

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) - A woman out for an early Mother's Day lunch at the Cracker Barrel restaurant found a mouse in her vegetable soup. The woman had already eaten some of the soup on Saturday when she scooped up the mouse.

The discovery prompted the chain to immediately halt the serving of vegetable soup at the Newport News restaurant as well as nationally, a corporate spokeswoman said Monday.

``As soon as the problem was discovered, we stopped serving the product,'' Julie Davis said from Cracker Barrel's suburban Nashville, Tenn., headquarters.

The mouse, less than 2 inches long, is being tested to determine whether it got into the soup at the store or was already in a soup package when it arrived from a vendor.

``We want to know how this happened,'' Davis said.

The Newport News store had received its regular pest control service on April 13, she said.

Davis said Cracker Barrel deemed the discovery so serious, President Donald M. Turner was involved within hours of the discovery to direct the company's response.

``I can't stress enough how seriously we view this,'' Davis said.

Information from: Daily Press


05/10/04 18:54

© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Click to expand...

That would be Cock-a-squeekie then?

....Coat.....
 
The part the conerns me, though...

lopaka said:
The mouse, less than 2 inches long, is being tested to determine whether it got into the soup at the store or was already in a soup package when it arrived from a vendor.

``We want to know how this happened,'' Davis said.
Click to expand...

Is that if it's a lie-detector test, not only are they inadmissable in court, but eyewitness statements are so unreliable, as a rule. ;)

A drug-test on the other hand, might explain the mouse's action's more fully.
 
Re: The part the conerns me, though...

lopaka said:
Is that if it's a lie-detector test, not only are they inadmissable in court, but eyewitness statements are so unreliable, as a rule. ;)

A drug-test on the other hand, might explain the mouse's action's more fully.
Click to expand...

Techncially its neither - latest breaking news suggests that they will be giving it a driving test as they found a tiny car crashed next to the soup vat in the factory. Police have put out an APB for a Stuart Little :(

Emps
 
On o more serious and only loosly connected note, I just found out that Fanta was the official soft drink of the Nazis.
:cross eye
Lets go out in the Beetle and get some.....
:err:
 
I feel sick:

Media exposure forces government to respond to hair-into-soy sauce scandal


Shanghai. (Interfax-China) - The Chinese government has shown an unusually high level of concern as a result of a bold media exposure towards a scandal in which human hair was used to make soy sauce. The government has now ordered an immediate inspection of all domestic food seasoning plants before the end of January.

China Central Television (CCTV), the state television station, first raised public worries over the quality of domestic soy sauce by uncovering a substandard workshop in central China's Hubei Province, where piles of waste human hair were found. The hairs were treated in special containers to distill amino acid, the most common substance contained in soybean sauce.

Human hair is rich in protein content, just like soybean, wheat and bran, the conventional and legally accepted raw ingredients for the production of soy sauce.

The plant, describing itself as a bioengineering company, made around 100,000 tons of amino acid daily, in either syrup or powder form, making it easier for delivery, plant workers said. They were then distributed to diluting plants in or near the province, where it was diluted with approximately ten times water, was then made into ready-for-use soy sauce and was bottled or packaged.

In one such plant shown on the CCTV program, more chemical additives were poured into the amino acid syrup and heated and stirred continuously by a worker.

The additives include one whole bag of solid hydroxide to make the sauce taste better, and bottles of hydrochloric acid to balance the acid and alkali content in the mixture in order to make it safer for human consumption. Both additives were for industrial use only, according to their packaging.

By producing soy sauce from such raw materials, the producers were said able to cut costs by half. Workers employed at the plants, however, never bought soy sauce marked as "blended" on the packaging, because that usually meant that human hair was the basic material in the sauce.

Soy sauce made from human hair is not the first low-quality food product exposed by state television, which launched a program called "Weekly Quality Report" around half a year ago. The program, which conducts investigations into the low quality of some of China's most common food products, has frequently ruined the public appetite.

In related news the Beijing Star Daily reported the Beijing government has begun closer monitoring and supervision of 14 kinds of foods, including rice, meat, vegetables, bottled water, dairy products and cooking oil due to fears of large-scale food-poisoning cases.
Click to expand...

http://www.interfax.com/com?item=search&pg=0&id=5680503&req=soy
 
That's it, only Japanese soy sauce from now on for me!

:cross eye
 
But perhaps you are falling for some kind of yakuza plot?

Tests reveal mouse-in-soup hoax; pair charged

The Hampton woman and son who claimed to find a mouse in a bowl of soup at Cracker Barrel apparently planted it to extort money.



BY PETER DUJARDIN
247-4749

June 2, 2004

NEWPORT NEWS -- A woman who said she found a mouse in her soup at a Cracker Barrel restaurant last month made up the hoax, the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office said Tuesday.

Carla Patterson, 36, and her son, Ricky Patterson, 20, both of the 100 block of Westview Drive in Hampton, were charged Tuesday with attempted extortion and conspiracy to commit a felony after they tried to get Cracker Barrel to give them money in the hoax, said Howard Gwynn, Newport News' commonwealth's attorney.

Patterson was eating at the Newport News restaurant, across from Patrick Henry Mall on Jefferson Avenue, on May 8 when she said she discovered the mouse in a bowl of vegetable soup. Her screams prompted other patrons to leave the restaurant, and the incident caused Cracker Barrel to stop serving vegetable soup at all of its 497 stores nationwide.

The Pattersons were arrested Tuesday after a sting operation in which officials from Cracker Barrel met them at an undisclosed location and handed them a check, with law enforcement officials witnessing the handover from nearby, Gwynn said. The police department's economic crimes unit had developed the plan for the arrest after gathering evidence in recent days, police said.

Julie Davis, a corporate spokeswoman at Cracker Barrel's headquarters near Nashville, Tenn., said the Pattersons had demanded 0,000 from the company.

Under the deal that Cracker Barrel had arranged with the Pattersons for the sting, the restaurant chain was to turn over the money in exchange for pictures of the mouse that Ricky Patterson had taken with his cell phone camera. Also as part of the deal, Davis said, Ricky Patterson was to publicly admit that he had made up the story.

But instead of getting to keep the check, the Pattersons got arrested.

"We are very grateful for the effort of the law enforcement officials and that this fraud has been exposed," Davis said of the arrests. "We are very relieved for the employees of our stores, especially our Newport News store. They were brave and maintained an excellent level of customer service despite three weeks of negative publicity and jokes on Leno and Letterman. This restores our reputation and our good name."

The Newport News store suffered greatly in the incident, she said, with business slowing down substantially. The store's workers lost tips, and some were transferred to other stores to make up hours they lost to the slowdown.

Davis said Cracker Barrel had undertaken an in-depth investigation as soon as the Pattersons said they found the mouse.

But when the laboratory analysis of the small, black mouse came back, Davis said, it was clear that something was amiss. "It was a very methodical investigation, and we knew that something was very wrong," she said.

For one thing, she said, the autopsy showed that the mouse had not drowned, and was not cooked. The mouse did not have any soup in its internal system. The mouse, Davis said, died of a skull fracture.

There was no evidence of rodent activity at the Newport News restaurant, she said. Further, an independent audit of the vendor that provided the soup to Cracker Barrel in bags, she said, indicated that it would have been impossible for the mouse to make it through the soup-making process in one piece.

On Thursday, a Cracker Barrel lawyer in Roanoke contacted the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office in Newport News, and company officials later laid out the evidence that they had gathered so far. Gwynn said his office advised Cracker Barrel to take additional steps and ask additional questions of the Pattersons. Ultimately, his office arranged the sting operation with the police department.

"There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that will come out at trial," Gwynn said of the information his office has gathered.

Carla Patterson, the vice president of athletics for the Denbigh Youth Football and Cheerleading Association, part of the city's Parks and Recreation department, could not be reached Tuesday. Her son Ricky also could not be reached. They were being booked at Newport News City Jail, police said.
Click to expand...

http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-20996sy0jun02,0,2325487.story?coll=dp-headlines-topnews

Emps
 
Some more of the chef's special sauce?

Eeeeeeeeeeew:

Ex-cook is charged with tainting food

By William Lamb
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/03/2004



A former night-shift cook at the Denny's restaurant on Illinois Route 3 in Waterloo has been charged with aggravated battery after being accused of contaminating food and watching customers eat it, authorities said Thursday.

Police said that Anthony J. Lindhorst, 26, of Waterloo, deliberately contaminated food on at least two occasions by putting his semen into the honey-mustard dressing that the restaurant serves with its chicken strips, said Capt. Suzanne Sweet of the Waterloo police. The incidents occurred in November and April, police said.

On both occasions, Lindhorst targeted "people that he didn't like, for one reason or another," Sweet said. One was a woman in her early 40s. The other victim, Sweet said, was a male police officer in his late 20s who had issued Lindhorst a traffic ticket.

A judge in Monroe County this week found probable cause for Lindhorst to stand trial on four counts of aggravated battery.

Sweet said that Lindhorst worked at the restaurant for about a year until he was fired in April for bringing brownies to work that he had baked with marijuana. Lindhorst served the brownies to two co-workers and that two of the aggravated battery charges stem from that incident, Sweet said.

Waterloo police launched an investigation into the incidents on May 12 after three witnesses came forward with information, Sweet said. Lindhorst was arrested May 17.

Kris Reitz, the Monroe County state's attorney, declined to comment on the case Thursday

Lindhorst, who is out on bond, also could not be reached.

In addition to being unpleasant, Lindhorst's alleged behavior also carries serious health risks, Sweet said. Both victims have undergone blood tests that so far have found no evidence of communicable disease, Sweet said.
Click to expand...

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ne...eadline=Ex-cook+is+charged+with+tainting+food
 
On Friday, Global News (out of Toronto) reported on a family finding part of a metal bolt inside their daughter's Nutri-Grain bar. (I poked around but didn't find anything about it on the web. )
 
They found dog meat on the kebabs in a local chippy - I have always wondered whether it was dog food or the meat of a dog (as I'd had kebabs from there - tasty though so.......):

'Dog food hot dogs' sold to Dutch snackbars

7 June 2004

AMSTERDAM — Food authorities revoked the operating licence of a meat product company in Stekene in Belgium last week after used dog food meat was found in almost 20,000kg of "chicken frikadel" and "chicken burgers" that were sold in the Netherlands. Ironically, a frikadel is a mince meat hot dog.

The Federal Food Agency in Belgium has recalled the products because the meat scraps used in the products were intended for use in the dog food industry, news agency ANP reported.

The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (VWA) claimed on Friday that a large quantity of the suspect food products were still in the possession of a Dutch company at a cold storage warehouse. The VWA strongly urged the company to recall all sold products.

The VWA has also advised the company to alert the public. The two directors of the Belgian company were arrested in Belgium. The company operated under the names CSFF and Delireine.

But the VWA is legally unable to release the name of the Dutch public. A spokeswoman said the company did not supply large snackbars or retail chains. Most of the stores supplied with the "dog food frikadellen" are small butchers and snackbars.

The Dutch consumer watchdog Consumentenbond labelled the actions of the Belgian company criminal and said it is disappointing that it took so long for the crime to be discovered. It said the tracing system of food and the recall system must be re-examined.
Click to expand...

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=8274

And I think I had some of those when I was in Amsterdam recently - no wonder my dogs look at me funny ;)

Emps
 
Police said that Anthony J. Lindhorst, 26, of Waterloo, deliberately contaminated food on at least two occasions by putting his semen into the honey-mustard dressing
Click to expand...

Eeeuu, perhaps he'd been watching Fight Club?
 
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