to think this is disgusting?

[disgustedmummy]

I was batch cooking for my baby, making barley pot. This requires chopped tomatoes so I used a tin of tesco's tomatoes. So far, so good. Put all the ingredients in and was about to leave it to simmer when I saw something odd looking floating. I took this out and rinsed it off in the sink and it appears to be a peace of meat.

I am horrified by this as 1) me and my daughter are vegetarian, and 2) even if we weren't you don't expect/want to find meat in a tin of chopped tomatoes. It could be mouse/rat/who knows.

I am disgusted and massively annoyed at having cooked a whole meal for it to be wasted (I was brought up to never waste food), also I am worried that I might not have found it and given this to my baby unknowingly. Other people may also be buying contaminated tins too.

My question is what to do? Are other tins contaminated?

The tin is own brand tesco chopped tomatoes in tomato juice and is labelled as suitable for vegetarians!!!

I just phoned to check the complaint is being dealt with and the 'customer service manager' actually hung up on me when I asked for his name! I am truly shocked by their 'customer service'.

They told me it may take up to 6 weeks for the contaminated product to be taken off the shelves, despite it being a public health issue..

Tesco are not good at Customer Service in my experience. We have had a run of manky fruit & a curdled carton of longlife soya milk in the last few weeks alone & they just don't want to know. At best you grudgingly get a refund but only if you bring in the product and receipt. Who wants to have festering fruit in their kitchen? Yesterday I discovered that I have been eating an opened jar of peanut butter - I thought that my DP had opened it but not so - yuk!

As for the value tinned tomatoes I have stopped buying them because I have found that they smell cheesy. I haven't found any foreign objects though, thankfully!

I do hope that you get this sorted soon OP.

I am updating this just in case this happens to anyone else (and since Tesco says it is so common that they still haven't been able to contact me 10 days later it is apparantely pretty common).

If it happens do not give the tin to tesco's, as this won't allow trading standards to do a full investigation. Given tesco's poor customer service I think it would be best not to deal with them at all, and let trading standards investigate on their own.

I chased it up as I should have heard back by now and was told rather rudely that I should have left the meat at the store (I chopped it into 2 peices - one has gone to trading standards and one is in my freezer waiting for tesco). When I was at the store they told me to keep it and they would send a courier. Still waiting to hear back from someone regarding the complaint, and still waiting for an apology!