A Shirehampton mum has raised concerns after her son allegedly cut his lip on a “foreign body” in an Asda pizza.
Jess Palmer received the £1.25 own-brand pizza on Sunday (July 25) when Asda delivered her shopping from its Patchway store, then eight-year-old Stanley had it for dinner on Tuesday.
Ms Palmer claims her son said “something’s in my mouth mum” and pulled a piece of what appeared to be glass or sharp plastic from his mouth, she says.
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“I can’t say for sure it’s glass, it could be clear plastic, but his mouth was bleeding pretty badly,” she added. “It looked and felt like glass.”
The mum, in her early 40s, is unhappy with the response from Asda. Its product quality team only contacted her on Friday, telling her it could not investigate because she had not kept the packaging.
Ms Palmer believes Asda should have considered a product recall, adding: “Anyone who got that batch of pizzas will probably have eaten them by now and I think that’s really worrying.”
Asda has apologised for not meeting its “high standards of service”.
The mum says she has regularly bought Asda own-brand pizza in the past because “kids seem to love them”.
“It was one of those cheap ones in cellophane that cost £1.25, with about four bits of cheese on top. We get them all the time.”
The object in the Asda pizza
Ms Palmer described it as “quite shocking” when “a lot” of blood allegedly came from her son’s lip after he bit into the pizza.
“You’re panicking because you don’t know if that’s the only bit, you don’t know if it’s gone down,” she added.
“I told him to spit it all out but you don’t know. Thankfully there were no after-effects.
“I got in touch with Asda Service Team at 8.20pm on Tuesday. I tweeted them with a picture of the object and my son’s cut lip. They didn’t reply until 9.30pm, to ask for my details and order number.
“It was really annoying because someone tweeted saying ‘look at the ratio of banana to shrimp sweets in a packet’, and within two minutes they’d got a response.”
Ms Palmer says she provided her details immediately but did not hear again from Asda until 11.30am the next day.
“They said due to the seriousness of this, they needed to ensure it was raised with the product quality team,” she added.
“They asked me if I still had the ‘foreign body’. They then arranged a refund, but I got really annoyed, because this was 24 hours later, they’d refunded me £1.25 and acted like that was the end of it.
“I said the £1.25 was not the issue. I felt quite angry. I don’t want money — I just don’t want this to happen to other people. The next person might not be as lucky.”
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Ms Palmer received an email from the quality team on Friday morning, saying: “I am sorry your son hurt his mouth in a foreign object that was on the Asda pizza.”
The Asda employee asked Ms Palmer for the pizza packaging. The mum had kept the sharp object, but thrown away the packaging.
The employee then told her it was “really difficult” to “fully investigate” without the packaging, because the label “carries vital information which allows us trace things back through the production process”.
They added they were “unable to investigate” but offered £10 as a goodwill gesture due to Ms Palmer’s “concern”.
Ms Palmer said: “I told them that maybe when I’d reported it on Tuesday, it would have been good to ask me to hang onto the packaging then, and not wait until Friday, after bin day.
“They said it was disappointing to hear I was not asked to retain the packaging and they would ensure ‘learnings are taken in this respect’.”
The Asda employee told her the business would “usually arrange for the object to be sent to a supplier for analysis. But without the packaging we do not know which of our suppliers that may be.”
Ms Palmer says she did not complain for a refund or compensation. She accused Asda of a lack of concern over the matter.
An Asda spokesman said: “We have apologised to Ms Palmer for not meeting the high standards of service expected from us and we can reassure our customers that we have had no other complaints of this nature.
“We would ask all of our customers that if they are not satisfied with a product and want to make a complaint then they should keep the packaging so we can fully investigate what may have happened.”
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