Caramel or blood? Family finds catheter in ice cream tub

Things suddenly turned sour for one Canadian family who were enjoying some time away with one another this weekend after they found a catheter inside a tub of ice cream.

Three people were already licking away at the delicious chocolate and caramel Coaticook ice cream when one of the guests felt something hard in his mouth.

After spitting it out, it became clear the unwanted ingredient was in fact part of a catheter that had somehow made its way inside the container.

The family tell CBC that there was something dark on the tip and in a particularly stomach-churning moment, the family could not tell if it was caramel or blood.

"He put it in his mouth and found the tip of syringe," Carole-Anne Christofferson told Radio-Canada as she told of the moment the grandfather of the family made the gruesome discovery.

"He's the worst off, the most affected. He's not even able to speak about it."

The ice cream had been bought at a grocery store in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, the Daily Mail reported.

The family had to go to a hospital for HIV tests as well as for Hepatitis A, B and C. They will also need blood tests for the next six months.

Christofferson has complained to the ice cream maker and is considering taking legal action.

The ice cream company Coaticook has said it will be conducting an internal investigation into what happened and stresses that this is the first time they have received such a complaint.

'We have so many internal controls here and in food production in general that having something like that show up in a food item, it's not normal,' said Jean Provencher, the owner of Coaticook.

Inspectors from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are now looking into how the slip-up happened at the factory itself.