Mum needled by pin in food response

Bec King's son Flynn Durrant found the rusty pin in his chicken. Photo / Supplied

A Papamoa mother says she's choking on a supermarket's response after her son bit into a piece of chicken and spat out a rusty pin.

Bec King bought some "beautifully butterflied" thigh pieces on July 26 from her local Countdown. She served it up in a creamy sauce to her four children and partner later that evening.

"We're enjoying it and then my little 7-year-old boy pulls something out of his mouth and said, 'Mum, look what I've just found in my chicken'. It was a rusty pin. We were disgusted and none of us could eat."

Asked how she knew the pin had come from the chicken, Ms King said her son cut into a piece, put it in his mouth and started chewing. There wasn't anything else on his fork.

She phoned the supermarket and told staff what had happened. The next day, she was given a replacement chicken, a refund and a bag of potatoes.

While Ms King had no problem with the initial local response, she said a head office response to her subsequent questions about how a 3cm pin could find its way to her son's plate and mouth was less palatable.

A report from Alton Gullery, the business manager for retail meat for Countdown's parent company, Progressive Enterprises, outlined the production process, including that the meat would have passed through one of two metal detectors in the sorting room.

Two tests were conducted to see if the pin, which was placed with the same sort of boneless, skinless product Ms King bought, would have set off the detectors. Both times, the production line was immediately halted and automatic alarms activated, the report said.

In an email to Ms King, Mr Gullery wrote: "The conclusion that can be drawn from this report is that it is extremely unlikely that the pin would have come from the processing plant."

Ms King said that left her thinking the pin had magically appeared out of nowhere.

"No one from Countdown has taken responsibility. The report says their machinery was working so therefore the pin has not come from their factory, end of story. From when it's left the factory to when it has ended up on our plate, somewhere in there it's got into our chicken."

The problem with that scenario was that the wrapper wasn't pierced, said Ms King. If it had been a different child the outcome might have been different.

"We've got a blind and autistic 12-year-old. He may not have known any different. There's the what if, what if, what if."

In a statement last night, Progressive Enterprises general manager (fresh), Brett Ashley, said the company took food safety standards seriously.

"We are very concerned that this object was found in the piece of chicken. We hope that the child did not sustain an injury, and we are disappointed that this has occurred.

"Pins, like the one found in the chicken, are not used in our processing plant, nor in our supermarkets.

"This is the only report of this kind that we have received."