Thursday, March 28, 2024

Needle found in packaged vegetable product purchased at Victoria grocery store

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One Greater Victoria resident was eating her lunch last week when she was shocked to find a sewing needle in her mouth.

On January 6th, Oak Bay Police was alerted to an incident in which the individual mixed four packaged salad products purchased from Red Barn Market on Oak Bay Avenue.

When she tried to eat the mixed salad, she found something hard in her mouth, and saw that it was a sewing needle.

According to a social media post from her husband, Josh Stevens, the items involved were shredded carrots, shredded beets, Tim’s Nutri-Greens (mixed micro greens), and bagged bean sprouts.

(Photo by Josh Stevens/Facebook)

These items were removed from the shelves at Red Barn Market while the store conducted an investigation into the incident.

“One of our suppliers are currently doing an audit on their process to ensure there is nothing from their end or very low risk. There’s the use of metal detectors in facilities,” Russ Benwell, owner of Red Barn, tells Victoria Buzz.

“We went through all the products and found no other evidence of foreign objects in any other products from any suppliers. They were taken off the shelves and we’ve ordered all new products.”

While Benwell cannot say conclusively whether or not the products were tampered with before they were sold, he did state that Red Barn sells them in a tamper-proof format, so the first person to have opened the items would be the customer.

However according to the social media post by Stevens, there was no chance that the sewing needle came from their household.

“No sewing needles anywhere near our kitchen or really around anywhere. Totally not an option. This was external,” he writes.

Upon contacting the store, Stevens states that the owner was apologetic, helpful, and very concerned about the incident.

“My biggest fear is that it didn’t come as a freak accident from the supplier, but rather was done deliberately by someone with ill intent.”

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Brishti Basu
Former Senior Staff Writer and Content Manager at Victoria Buzz.

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