foreign bodies in food

sooz

i found glass in my tesco peas last night. spoken to people at 3 different tesco numbers, and e-mailed them, but no-one seems to care. all they want is for me to return the glass and packaging to the shop to get a refund. i insist that i cannot do this for several days, coz car trouble, but no-one seems interested. they won't even take the products off the shelf til they see the packaging. i've given bar codes etc, but nothing. i keep saying i don't even want a refund of replacement...i want nothing more to do with their peas...any ideas.

Smiley_Mum

I wouldn't return the peas/glass to them, then you have no comeback etc, they can just give you a paltry refund and send you on your way. You could try Trading Standards or Protective Services (used to be Environmental Health).

Here is the main Trading Standards website link, you should be able to get some info from here -

http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/cgi-bin/newslist.cgi?area=safe

Meantime, hang onto the peas/glass etc, just keep in freezer until you contact the Trading Standards on Monday.

Nile

If you return the product to a Tesco store, they may not investigate and prevent it happening again. They certainly will be delighted that it has been given little (or no) publicity. Tesco may continue to sell this product.

I would take the product my local trading standards department. They will ensure that a thorough investigation is carried out. This will hopefully mean that the producer takes corrective action to prevent a reoccurrence.

Swattie

I found a small stone in a packet of Boots Pumpkin seeds a few days ago.

Rang up their cust services to let them know as have a child and it cold jhave been her eating them and I nearly broke my tooth.

They asked me to return the packet (plus stone) for analysis and committed to letting me know the result and gave me a Freepost address to send it to. They also credited my advantage card 500 pts (which isn't why I phoned - but it was nice anyway).

More importantly they were concerned that it had happened and wanted to investigate.

IvanOpinion

Tescos probably need the product back so that they can analyse the type of glass and which batch number it came from. The batch is important because many different branded products could come from the same source (which can differ over time) therefore the product you have may not be the only one. They need to ascertain were the contamination came from - which could have been at the processing stage, within the shop or a deliberate plant by the customer (it happens) and how widespread it is likely to be.

Previous experience has shown that Tescos will investigate properly and give you an answer

Don't jump on the 'must find someone to blame and hold responsible' bandwagon ... accidents and mistakes happen and we should be greatful when we were not harmed by them. Also, to put things in perspective, before you panic about a bag of peas remember that it is more likely that you will be killed on the way to the supermarket than you will get another bag with glass in it .. sobering thought

Ivan

sooz

i am not trying to find someone to blame, nor asking for anything in return for finding glass.

i'm just concerned that despite giving all the details on the packaging, bar code, weight, date made, best before date etc and saying that i could not come in, no-one was prepared to do anything...that is the bit that concerns me

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since i found and did NOT eat the glass the object itself becomes incidental.

VickyA_2

There will probably be one small code on the pack which will be the number that they're wanting.

When I worked for a company that supplied Tesco, every foreign body complaint was dealt with very strictly on both sides (Tesco and supplier). Often we were told on the same day as it was found in Tesco/by customer. A full report then had to be given to both the consumer and the supermarket within days. However, in our case the foreign body was normally an aphid in the middle of a lettuce straight out of the field...... that you wouldn't be able to detect unless you actually wanted to eat it.

IvanOpinion

sooz wrote:

i am not trying to find someone to blame, nor asking for anything in return for finding glass.

make sure you get another pack of glass ... I mean peas (green and round - good, frosted and jaggy - bad)

i'm just concerned that despite giving all the details on the packaging, bar code, weight, date made, best before date etc and saying that i could not come in, no-one was prepared to do anything...that is the bit that concerns me

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since i found and did NOT eat the glass the object itself becomes incidental.

What do you want them to do? They can't just act on a phone call - can you guess how many crank calls they could get in a day. For a similar reason you can't expect them to call out and pick it up based on a phone call (even if they had a van in the area doing deliveries it could still be a crank call designed to get some poor little old disabled lady to come to her door) ... and yes there are some sick individuals that take pleasure in that sort of thing.

Until they have the product and the contaminant in their hands they can not do any kind of meaningful investigation.

Ivan