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A Wellington father has spoken out after finding a sewing needle inside a loaf of sliced bread, saying he is concerned his children could have been harmed by the dangerous foreign object.
Dwight, who asked to keep his surname private, told the Herald he found the needle while buttering bread from a loaf of Ploughmans Harvest Rye and said the find was “super unnerving”.
“Thank Christ I didn’t bite it,” Dwight told the Herald. “I shudder to think, my second thought was if one of my kids had picked up that sandwich and taken a big bite out of it, what are the odds they would have got that needle through the tongue, through the lip... it’s horrendous”.
He revealed the loaf was baked around 4 weeks ago and had been stored in his freezer since he bought it from a local supermarket. Dwight said he noticed the object when the light bounced off it after he defrosted the loaf to make sandwiches, saying it did not appear to have been baked in and there were no holes in the bread bag.
Dwight noticed the needle as he was buttering the bread. Photo / Supplied
Dwight told the Herald he feared that there was something sinister behind the placement of the needle.
“The only thing I can think of is someone with malice has chucked the needle in my friggin’ loaf of bread,” he said.
He shared his find online and contacted George Weston Foods, which produces the bread, and the police.
He said he had been assured by George Weston that there was no way it could have been inserted at the factory and said he had no reason to doubt them, praising them for their speedy response.
Dwight expressed concern that his children could have bitten into the needle. Photo / Supplied
Noting that it was a single incident in a lifetime of buying bread, he advised consumers to still be cautious about the food they buy. “With any food now, I guess you think ‘what if?’”, he told the Herald.
“I was genuinely shocked, and more concerned about whether my kids could have got a sandwich from me and been harmed,” he wrote online. “If it turns out to be a one-off, then no harm, if it turns out to be more; then I feel like I’ve done my bit.”
After sharing photos of his find to Reddit, Dwight was hit with claims he had inserted the needle himself to get attention.
He totally denied those claims and said he shared the photos because it was in the public interest, adding he photographed the needle as soon as he saw it and as he removed it.
Dwight spotted the needle as he buttered his bread. Photo / Supplied
A spokesperson for George Weston Foods told the Herald that the company is taking the discovery seriously.
They said the company has requested photos of the product and sent out a courier bag for the sample to be collected so they can review it.
“We operate a multi-level inspection process within our bakery. All our loaves are passed through metal detectors as part of the manufacturing process,” the spokesperson said.
“Product quality is very important to us, so we take this matter very seriously. We have a rigorous food safety program, with zero tolerance for quality breaches. Once we have photos and the product we will determine next steps.”
Police told the Herald: “Reports of foreign objects in food, though infrequent, are taken seriously. Police will be working with MPI on this matter.”
New Zealand Food Safety’s deputy director general, Vincent Arbuckle, told the Herald that they take all complaints about needles in food seriously.
“We infrequently receive complaints about needles in food. While we take all complaints seriously, in our experience there are many potential explanations for this and when investigated the vast majority do not present a wider risk to consumers or the public,” Arbuckle said.
“Food producers, such as George Weston, have processes in place to minimise the risk of foreign objects, particularly metal.”
