A Waikato mum has described the horrifying moment she found a rat's foot in her ten-month-old son's mouth, while he was eating garlic bread she bought from a supermarket.
The mum, who lives in Te Awamutu, told Newshub she'd heated up some garlic bread for her children on Friday afternoon.
Then, as they tucked in, she noticed something odd.
"I turned around just for a split second, and I saw something that wasn't garlic bread in my son's mouth. I was like 'what the heck!'" she told Newshub.
She grabbed it out of her son's mouth, not knowing what it was. Then came the moment of realisation: it was a rodent foot, inside the garlic bread.
The mum said shortly after, she complained to Pak'nSave Te Awamutu, where she'd bought the garlic bread.
Staff apologised, she said, and offered a refund or a replacement garlic bread. The mum said she wasn't happy with that answer because her children could have swallowed the rodent's foot without noticing.
She posted about her experience to Facebook, and a friend of hers reposted it on Pak'nSave's public Facebook page. Shortly afterwards a compliance manager got in touch with the mum.
"We're following up with suppliers, the staff who took your phone call, and our store managers," they said.
The mum claimed Pak'nSave eventually offered to pay their "medical bills" and associated costs.
"So they've done pretty good around the situation."
However she said she was just annoyed that she got "shrugged off completely".
"I said to them: 'I don't want a refund, I don't want anything like that. You need to get this garlic bread off the shelf'."
A Foodstuffs spokesperson told Newshub the company takes food safety seriously, and they have strict processes and protocols in place to ensure the highest standards.
"On Friday, a customer called the team at PAK'nSAVE Te Awamutu after finding, what appears to be, part of a rodent in some garlic bread that's made for the store by a third-party supplier," they said.
The product arrives at Pak'nSave fully wrapped and sealed, the spokesperson added.
"Immediately after the customer got in touch, the store team took the batch of garlic bread off the shelves straight away, advised the supplier - and the customer has brought the product back to the store and was offered a refund."
The spokesperson said a "thorough investigation" was immediately started.
"As a precautionary measure, Foodstuffs (PAK'nSAVE, New World, Four Square, Gilmours & Trents) have initiated a trade recall, which means they're removing the same batch of the garlic bread product from all shelves nationwide.
"The store team is in regular contact with the customer who is understandably very concerned and, together with the supplier, Ministry of Primary Industries and NZ Food Safety, we're working with urgency to get to the bottom of what's happened here."
