Bagged salad contained decomposed AVIAN CORPSE

A Tesco's baby leaf and rocket salad harboured a gruesome interloper – a decomposed bird carcass. Somerset man Paul Streeter unwittingly served up the grisly corpse to his girlfriend and children, after emptying the bagged salad into a bowl and serving it to them with a pizza. Streeter said his girlfriend cut into the bird …

[Version 1.0]

Forgive me

But what the heck is this article doing here? Are you going into competition with Fark? Do we need a Somerset tag?

[Ian Ferguson]

That's why it's in 'Bootnotes'

[Oor Nonny-Muss]

Obviously the deceased avian...

... might have been carrying data compliant with RFC1149, RFC 2549 or RFC6214...

If it was someone here might now have an explanation for the excessive packet loss.

[Destroy All Monsters]

> data compliant with RFC1149

Only if it was an african swallow. The european swallow SHALL NOT carry data loads in excess of half a coconut.

> On discovering the bird, she shrieked and later vomited.

As opposed to vomited and later shrieked??

[BristolBachelor]

Is it worse than the story about a wizard from Hogwarts improving the de-icing ability of rock-salt by saying some funny words and sprinkling it with homeopathic water?

[Boris J's Quiff]

So it was a Chicken Salad then?

[loopy lou]

No it was "baby, leaf, and rocket" salad. Cheapskates put in baby birds instead of proper ones and left out the rockets completely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Missed the most vital incredient in the full horror of this story .... she is a VEGETARIAN!

[Anonymous John]

It goes without saying.

When did you last see a story in the Daily Mail about someone finding lettuce in a packet of sausages?

[TRT]

I suppose...

this was a situation about which he tweeted; which is more than poor, dead bird could do.

[Silverburn]

Gross

This is the reason I don't eat Salad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course

The contents of sausages, pies etc. are /far/ less gruesome.

[Jim 59]

Bleach

I stopped eating bagged salad after discovering they wash it in chlorine. It's not the chlorine, it's the thought of what was so dirty it required bleach ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know those big muddy places, err... fields? That's where they grow it. With the aid of horse manure and other fertilisers.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no hygiene freak

But don't these people at least rinse things before eating them?

[Red Bren]

According to the label

"Washed and ready to eat"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: According to the label

Do you know what those things are washed in to make sure all the bacteria and whatever are killed?

I think I'd rather eat an unwashed fresh lettuce with resident creepy crawly, slithery slimey bug type things than a pre-washed ready to eat one which hasn't been rinsed.

[Red Bren]

Do I know?

Actually no, I didn't. But I don't eat salad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

Do you scrub your lettuce, leaf by leaf, with antibacterial soap? I don't know anyone who does. If you're worried about killing all the bacteria, running it under cold water aint gonna do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pre-washed salads are necessarily also pre-rinsed. Not that it would have made the concoction in question particularly more appetizing...

[dssf]

So are hot dates, butt

One should still rinse and do a sniff test. (Especially in a dark theater...)

Really, I sometimes if not regularly sniff my food before eating. Sometimes it is because it has a compelling aroma, other times because it may be leftovers a day or two past my personal cutoff date.

Human dates or factory pre-packed edibles, one should always do a sniff test. (Candies may be different, but for chips (USA, bagged type), crackers, and loose things, how much can it take to give a quick look?

Trust, but verify....

[AndrueC]

Sounds like they got in a flap about it..unlikely the bird which never will ever again :)

[Scott Broukell]

<mmmmmm>

extra bit of protein :-)

ffs make the salad yourselves peeps, these ready prepared salads are well known to be so heavily washed in bleaches and other chemicals that their nutrient levels suffer accordingly. And, once the seal on the de-oxygenated atmosphere in the bag is broken, you've got about ten minutes before the stuff is compost! (its days old before it even got to the supermarket).

Ready prepared, can't be arsed food - another way to contribute to the wasted food mountain in this country.

[Oliver Mayes]

Wasted food? Really?

So if I want to make a mixed leaf salad I should buy a dozen different lettuces, take a few leaves off of each one and then throw the rest away? Seems more efficient to buy a bag of pre-mixed leaves so the rest of the lettuces can go to other people. Instead of me ending up with one salad and 5.8 lettuces that I have no use for.

[Scott Broukell]

well duh!

no, no, no, you silly billy - any unused materials are simply put back in the chiller section of your fridge where they survive, fresh and happy, for anything up to another 7 x days - due to them being bought originally in the natural state of nakedness nature intended for them and not wrapped in any sort of plastic or stored, therein, in a de-oxygenated environment. Wake up at the back there !

[Oliver Mayes]

You're still asking me to eat an entire lettuce a day, every day for a week. I'm pretty sure I'd get bored by the third day.

[dssf]

Neighborhood Food Banks/Kitchens?

This is where it could be useful for densely packed neightborhoods to be able to accept leftovers or excess, but unprepared veggies. If I cooked nowadays, I'd probably waste food, too, just by having a whole lettuce head, but having no nearby place to accept it.

Plus, considering the legal risks, may places may only take unopened, not-easy-to-spoil/inject foods.

Maybe we need midget salad heads, or salads stripped and sold leaf, core, and mixed-leaf-core for those who want to boil the cores or feed them to pets or pay to get them for composting or something.

I bet we in developed areas daily dispose of a staggering amount of food that could go to food banks and kitchens for the homeless and housed-but-underfed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be silly

Seriously, the guy put it in the salad bowl and served it to the whole family without noticing, who in their right mind doesn't check salad and who sits round the table in a waltons family way these days anyway.

[Monty Burns]

er ... a lot of us actually. Its a good way to try to ensure that you maintain a family feeling - round the table, TV off (music on?) and damn good chat about "hows your day been then?"

[AndrueC]

Dad:"How's your day been?"

Mum:"It's been great so far. Did you check the salad for dead animals like I asked you to?"

[MJI]

Prepare it yourself

This is how to avoid such nasties

[Dean 9]

Not as rare as you think...

...not as bas a decomposing bird.

I was in Debenhams in Meadowhall a few months ago and my partner found a grasshopper in the salad.

The staff in store bagged the grasshopper up and sent it to head office. After testing head office wrote back to say it was a caterpillar!!

Obviously the grasshopper mutated during transport or that a) someone flunked GCSE Biology or b) a standard letter was sent out.

To say the least we don’t eat at Debenhams café anymore but we have lots of fun talking about it whenever we go in store, so other customers can hear our conversation. I think we have put a few people off.

[Richard 120]

So how did that go then?

Did you complain saying "There was a grasshopper in my salad, I want my money back."

And they wrote back saying "Aha! You can't have your money back because it wasn't a grasshopper, it was a caterpillar."

I'm not sure whether the species of invertebrate should really matter.

[Some Beggar]

\begin{clare rayner}

Perhaps she should consider dumping him and finding a boyfriend whose idea of cooking a meal doesn't include dumping a plastic bag of green stuff into a bowl.

[Anonymous Coward]

<insert misogynistic joke about sandwiches here>

[0laf]

Tesco value

After picking up baby milk in Tesco that was a year out of date I'm not surprised at this story.

Yes I'm more careful about checking dates now.

No the baby didn't drink any.

[Anonymous John]

I bought some Chicken McNuggets last week and found bits of a dead bird.

[Francis Boyle]

I find that hard to believe.

[half man half amzing]

Product Recall?

I find it hard to believe that this would be the only bag contaminated, I highly doubt the offending item was slipped in post bagging process. So how many other bags have been contaminated by this 'fowl' creature? :P

[Peter Simpson 1]

Do any of you appreciate...

...just how hard it is to get a live bird into a bagged salad?

No, I thought you didn't.

Of course, they're dead by the time the salad gets served, but while alive and fluttering, they keep the salad well tossed,. You *are* supposed to remove them before serving, but the caution is in very small print, so I expect you could overlook it.

//like the worm in the tequila bottle

[davearonson]

The bird...

...is apparently not the only tosser involved.

[Nick Davey]

The real question

is why he is spoling a nice pizza with that salad crap?

[Armando 123]

I thought

... it might be some froo-froo continental thing some celebrity [sic] chef had thought up.

They pay an extra $75 in LA for that thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now with free skeletal bird!

Free skeletal bird with every bag of washed and ready to eat tasteless leaves!

Crunchy on the outside, crunchy on the inside!

Grab yours while stocks last!

[davearonson]

I thought the crunchy bits...

....were supposed to come from Real Dead Crunchy Baby Frogs. Next thing I know you'll be telling me the Spring Mix isn't leaf springs, coil springs, V-springs, torsion springs, and so forth. Wouldn't that be a surprise?

[Ryan Kendall]

Frogs usually

Birds are extra rare, i used to work in a salad factory back in my uni days. It was mainly Frogs and Spiders that make it through. Must of been well hidden in the bag if the husband didn't even notice it when buying it at the shops.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fail

Too late el Reg, this was posted in National Press yesterday, and BBC I believe even had a picture of said desicated bird in a tesco salad bag.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you must serve raw vegetation as if it were food, then you have to accept the odd wildlife sneaking in occassionally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did someone order the

Twittering salad?

AC, because this is truly appalling and El Reg readers will find me no matter where I hide :-)