Woman alleges glass was in turkey sausage

A San Antonio woman alleges she suffered cuts to her tongue from glass shards in Butterball turkey sausage she ate two years ago.

Candy Bustamante Martinez, 30, now is suing Butterball LLC for product liability and negligence. She seeks damages ranging from $200,000 to $1 million in the case filed in state district court in San Antonio.

Representatives for North Carolina-based Butterball didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday. The company has yet to file an answer to the suit.

Martinez filed suit Nov. 12, a week shy of the second anniversary of the alleged incident. She also is representing her daughter, a minor, in the action.

Martinez “opened the original package of sausage immediately before cooking it, and there was no possible source of the glass shards in her own kitchen,” the suit says.

Her daughter “consumed quite a bit” of the turkey sausage. Martinez immediately took her to the emergency room to determine if she had ingested any of the glass.

Martinez’s daughter was given a laxative and antibiotics in the emergency room, the suit added. No injuries to the daughter were mentioned.

The following day, the complaint said, Martinez sought treatment for the cuts on her tongue.

Martinez purchased the turkey sausage in San Antonio, but the lawsuit doesn’t say whether she ever lodged any complaint with the store where she bought it, Butterball or the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The website for the USDA’S Food Safety and Inspection Services shows no recalls were ever issued for Butterball turkey sausage.

Only two recalls involving Butterball have occurred, most recently last month when the company recalled 14,000 pounds of ground turkey products that may have been contaminated with blue plastic. Consumers complained to FSIS about pieces of blue plastic embedded in the ground turkey. There were no confirmed reports of injuries.

In her suit, Martinez alleges a “manufacturing defect” in the food because it was “contaminated with glass shards.”

The actions of Butterball in selling the contaminated food represent a “breach of duty of ordinary care in the manufacturing, preparation, testing, marketing, distribution, and selling of food,” she further alleges.

The suit says Martinez and her daughter have incurred, and likely will incur in the future, damages for medical expenses, physical pain and mental anguish, temporary and permanent impairment, and loss of wage-earning capacity.

David “Clay” Snell, Martinez’s lawyer, didn’t respond to requests for comment.