Woolworths investigates 'serious' claim frog ended up in woman's dinner
While concerned by the claim, the supermarket giant says the incident appears to be isolated.
Woolworths has stressed its produce faces "rigorous" quality checks after a shopper claimed she found a dead frog in her dinner just as she was about to sit down and eat.
In a video that went viral on Thursday, the woman said she was “so excited” to consume the cooked pesto pasta until she made the “sick” discovery.
Footage shows what appears to be the dead frog covered in sauce sprawled out on top of the dish in the corner of a saucepan. The clip then cuts to an image of it on a kitchen counter and in a plastic bag, presumably after she removed it.
“Woolies the fresh food people, quite literally a fresh frog in my spinach. Can’t get much fresher than that,” she captioned the TikTok, tagging Woolworths’ account. The shopper claims the frog came from a bag of spinach labelled “ready to eat”.
Woolies shopper 'put off spinach'
Stunned social media users have flooded the TikTok’s comment section, many of who asked if the strange find was real.
“It’s for real. I couldn’t think of anything worse than picking a living animal out of my garden and putting it in my dinner,” the Woolies shopper responded, calling the experience “f***ed” . “Never been so excited to eat dinner in my life until I saw that.”
When asked if she still ate the pasta anyway, she said she “couldn’t think of anything worse”. “I’ve been put off spinach,’ the young woman added.
Other Aussies said they were disgusted by the supposed discovery. “The trauma I just received,” one woman said. “The way I’d never been able to eat again,” another added.
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Woolworths investigates incident
A Woolworths spokesperson told Yahoo News Australia they have been “speaking with the customer directly” and have “investigated this with our team and supplier as a priority.”
“Our supplier conducted numerous quality assessments on this batch of spinach leaves and did not detect any foreign objects throughout the processing, so this appears to be an isolated incident,” they said. “We take all customer feedback seriously and understand this must have been an unwelcome surprise for this customer particularly with the online comments on how delicious the meal looked.”
Woolworths said it works with a number of Aussie spinach growers and “have rigorous processes to maintain our product quality.”
"For our bags of spinach this includes washing the leaves and a number of quality checks, such as x-ray checks for foreign materials, before they are packaged and sent to our stores,” the spokesperson said.
Yahoo understands the woman was compensated for the entire meal. The shopper said she was given $70 in compensation.
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