IN RECENT weeks supermarkets have had to explain how horse meat found its way into beef products – but one woman claims she has found something even more unappetising.

Edna Cresswell had emptied the contents of a Tesco Everyday Value can of beans and sausages into a saucepan, heated it up and had started eating it when she found a 1.5inch nail.

The 77-year-old bought the beans from the Sudbury branch of Tesco, in Springlands Way.

“I was chewing away and bit on something hard which nearly broke my tooth,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it when I spat it out and realised it was a nail. I am a pensioner and I don’t even have any nails in the house so there is no other way it could have got into the food.

“It could have been really dangerous if it had gone through the side of my face or my tongue.

“And given that beans and sausages are popular with children, it could have been a disaster if a child had got this in their mouth.”

Mrs Cresswell, from Acton, near Sudbury, contacted Tesco, which took the can and nail back and issued her a refund of 40p.

A spokeswoman for the company told the EADT last night that while this seemed like “very little compensation” for such a potentially dangerous situation, the matter would be investigated thoroughly and Mrs Cresswell would be informed of the outcome.

She said: “A report will be sent straight to head office and they will probably also request that we send them the product to examine. Head office will then get in touch with the supplier and a thorough investigation will take place. A final report will be sent to the customer.”

She added: “We take this matter very seriously and we will be in touch with our customer as soon as we have investigated the issue.”

Babergh District Council’s corporate manager for food and safety, John Grayling, said environmental health officers would prefer people to contact their local authority if they found foreign objects in any product.

He added: “Ideally, we would want them to bring the product to us so we could investigate, contact the authority where the factory is and make sure nothing is amiss in the production line so that it doesn’t happen again.

“A nail is quite a big piece of metal so I would have expected that to have been detected.

“If people want to take it back to the shop where they bought it, they do of course have that choice but we would prefer to be able to take it up with a company ourselves so we can go right back to the source. I would hope that Tesco will take it to their primary authority.”