Ottawa police are investigating a food tampering case after metal pins were discovered in a ready-to-cook turkey shortly before Christmas.
So far they have no suspects, said const. Steven Desjourdy. Over the coming weeks, an investigator will be looking into the case from all aspects of the supply chain, he said.
The metal shirt pins were discovered by an Ottawa-area woman on Dec. 17 as she was carving the bird. No injuries were reported.
The turkey was returned the same day to the Loblaws store in Kanata, Ont., where it was sold. It had been processed on Dec. 6 by Granny’s Poultry Co-operative (Manitoba) Ltd. at its Blumenort facility.
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Officials from the poultry processor and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said no other pins were found after inspecting packaged turkeys at the Ottawa retailer and at Granny’s warehouse in Manitoba.
All the 505 other turkeys at the Loblaws store were passed through a metal detector, but no other pins were found.
At the Blumenort plant, the remaining turkeys in the warehouse were taken out of the cases, removed from their bags, cut and deboned, and then run through a metal detector. No foreign objects were found.
Yves Labbe, national poultry supervisor with the CFIA, told the Ottawa Citizen there was a high probability that the “malicious and deliberate act” was an isolated case.
Labbe said that judging from the location of the pins and their size, the intent was not to harm the consumer but to attract attention. He added that this was not the first time that foreign objects had been found in poultry during the holiday season.
Wayne Morrison of Granny’s Poultry, was quoted in reports as saying that he suspected mischief makers were to blame, adding that he doubted that animal rights activists were behind the incident.
Desjourdy said that security footage from closed circuit cameras in the store revealed no leads because they were positioned near the entrances and the cashiers, and not near the meat section.
