Woman’s shock over ‘disgusting’ chicken
RECOVERING from an operation is stressful enough, but when Emma Drew’s mother picked up some shopping to make her daughter’s life easier, little did they know it would make her ill.
Emma’s mother, Susan, picked up some essentials at Port Talbot’s Iceland store on Sunday, including a box of chicken breast fillets from the store’s own brand The Butcher’s Market, and paid in cash.
It was only when Emma’s partner opened the packaging, back home in the Rhondda, something didn’t seem right.
Emma said: “My partner, who can’t smell a lot thanks to his days playing rugby, said ‘have a smell of this,’ and as I went over to it I thought ‘oh my god.’ Seconds later I was throwing up.
“It was disgusting.”
The 36-year-old from Treherbert, who has endometriosis and has just had her eighth op to treat the condition, returned home from hospital last Wednesday and has been recovering since.
The keyhole surgery left her with stitches in her stomach and unable to walk much further than the bathroom.
Emma added: “I was retching, I could feel there was something wrong and I took the bandage off my belly button and it was bleeding.
“I had to take morphine for the pain it caused.
“When you have this operation, the quicker you can get off the morphine and start moving around the better, but after the vomiting and the pain it caused, I’ve had to go back on the morphine. It makes me feel awful, really lethargic.”
Emma, who works at the YMCA in Cardiff, said: “I told my mother what happened and so she checked her chicken and it was the same,” added Emma.
Her mother then took the packets – which had three days left before the use-by date was up – to her nearby Treorchy Iceland.
“They wouldn’t give my mother a refund and they took the chicken from her.
“She then phoned customer services where they still refused to refund the cost and said they’d give her the equivalent back on her Iceland card.
“I just couldn’t believe they didn’t give her the money back.”
A spokeswoman for Iceland Foods Ltd said: “Iceland takes all complaints about our food quality extremely seriously and we are sorry that this product appears to have fallen short of both our and the customer’s expectations and a detailed investigation is already under way.
“We have been in touch with Ms Drew and requested her to contact our Customer Care department, where we can apologise for the distress this situation has caused and we will ensure a full refund and goodwill gesture is arranged.”