The horse meat scandal may have left us wary of what we might find in our food packets, but one grandmother was especially shocked to discover a “doorstop-sized” wooden splinter in her frozen veg.

%image(14904516, type="article-full", alt="The "splinter" of wood was found in a frozen bag of Morrisons Casserole Vegetables")

Michele Robertson, 39, was cooking a hearty winter meal for her two grandchildren, Paul, four, and Ruby, three, as well as Ruby’s heavily pregnant mum Rachel Convoy, 20, when the “wedge of splinter wood” fell into the pan last Tuesday (March 12) afternoon.

The unwelcome find came from a packet of Morrisons frozen Casserole Vegetables which had been bought from the store in Dagenham.

“It’s just unbelievable,” said Michele, of Bentry Road, Dagenham. “It was like a doorstop.

“It ruined the dinner but it has also worried me because the kids could have ended up with splinters in their stomachs.”

After calling the Morrisons customer service helpline, Michele took the packet with the piece of wood to the store and was told that an investigation would be carried out.

“The way it was broken up, it looked like a piece of something larger that’s been chopped up with the veg. I reckon there could be more in other packets,” she added.

“The funny thing is, on the packet it does actually show a wooden chopping board but I didn’t expect to find it in there!”

Michele said that this wasn’t the first time she had found something unsavoury in a bag of frozen food, claiming that years ago she found a false fingernail complete with pink nail varnish in a Tesco’s frozen apple crumble bag.

A Morrisons spokeswoman said the company had apologised to the customer for any inconvenience caused.

She added: “At Morrisons we pride ourselves on the quality of our food and we have stringent checks and processes in place to identify and remove objects of this type.

“Given the controls in place, we were surprised that an object of this nature got into the pack.”

Morrisons technical team are continuing to investigate.