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Architect discovers rodent in “ready to eat” Belsize Park Tesco salad
The rodent in the Tesco Organic salad. Photo: Guy Stansfeld. - Credit: Archant
A Kentish Town architect has spoken of his disgust and health fears after accidentally putting a dead rodent in his mouth which was nestled in his bag of “ready washed” organic salad from the Tesco on England’s Lane.
The Tesco Organic salad, which claims it is "ready to eat" on the packet. Photo: Guy Stansfeld. - Credit: Archant
Guy Stansfeld discovered the rodent – which he believes might be a shrew – after he had already eaten half the salad.
Mr Stansfeld put the rodent in his mouth, without seeing it, before realising something was very wrong while eating dinner last night.
He had bought the salad a couple of days ago and it was still within its sell-by date.
The 53-year-old told the Ham&High: “It’s pretty revolting. I understand that mistakes happen and, in the end, I’ll base my judgement on the response I get from Tesco but people should know that claims that food is washed and ready to eat cannot be trusted.”
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He added: “I am still feeling pretty shaken up by the experience – although, to be fair, that might also have something to do with the half bottle of single malt whiskey I downed in an attempt to disinfect myself and unsuccessfully forget about what happened.”
Mr Stansfeld is now wondering whether he should see a doctor as the rodent went in his mouth.
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He called Tesco customer services last night and spoke to somebody who took his details and details of the packaging, with the bar code.
They asked him to bring the salad packet to a store, but Mr Stansfeld said: “I’m slightly suspicious that they will then dispose of the evidence and I won’t have much of a leg to stand on afterwards but I’m not sure what else I can do.”
He added: “I’m not particularly concerned about compensation other than as evidence that they are taking the matter seriously.”
Mr Stansfeld will also be contacting the Food Standards Agency.
A spokesman for Tesco said the supermarket was launching an investigation.
He said: “We have robust food quality processes in place during the preparation and packaging of our products, so we were surprised to hear about this incident.
“Our customer service team have been in touch with Mr Stansfeld to ask him to return the product to one of our stores and we will be asking our supplier to carry out an investigation.”
