Article Gross Things Found in Food
Type: Popular scam (though often the complaints turn out to be legitimate).
Summary: Someone claims to find an inappropriate object in their food. Sometimes such claims are legitimate. Often, however, they are attempts either to extort money from the food vendor or to attract media attention.
In 1906 The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, exposed the dark secrets of the meat-packing industry. Readers were shocked to learn of the secret ingredients in their sausages: rats, human fingers, and garbage shoveled off the floor. The public outcry the book provoked indirectly led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the food industry. However, the public is still sensitive about the idea of undesirable foreign objects ending up in commercially prepared food.
Such public sensitivity has created an opportunity for scam artists. The scam is to pretend to find something lurking in what you are served at a restaurant, and then to demand large monetary damages from the company that prepared the meal. This scam is given plausibility by the fact that restaurant patrons often really do find unpleasant items in their meals.
Wendy’s Chili Finger (2005) — scam
On March 22, 2005 Anna Ayala sat down to eat a bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant in San Jose, California, but she never finished the chili. Instead, she was soon shouting and protesting, claiming that she had found a human finger in her meal. Her claim received national attention, and sales at Wendy’s immediately plummeted.
Wendy’s launched an internal investigation, but couldn’t identify anyone involved in the preparation of the food who was missing a finger. The company also offered a $100,000 reward for any information about how the finger could have gotten into the chili.
Meanwhile the police launched their own investigation. A month later they arrested Ayala after concluding that she was the one who put the finger in the chili. The problem was that the finger, upon examination, had obviously not been cooked in the chili, casting doubt on Ayala’s claim. It also came to light that Ayala had a history of threatening large corporations with lawsuits. In 2000 she had sued General Motors, claiming a wheel had fallen off her car, but her suit was dismissed “with prejudice.” In 2004 she threatened El Pollo Loco with a suit, claiming her daughter had contracted salmonella poisoning from one of their restaurants. However, El Pollo Loco disputed her claim and paid her nothing.
Police eventually located the owner of the finger. It originally was attached to Brian Paul Rossiter, who had once worked with Ayala’s husband at an asphalt company. He had lost the tip of his finger in an accident in December 2004. Evidently Ayala and her husband then acquired it.
Ayala and her husband were charged with conspiring to file a false claim. They plead guilty. Ayala was sentenced to nine years in state prison. Her husband received a sentence of twelve years.
Fried Baby Foot (2004) — prank
In July 2004 a family in Durham, North Carolina found what appeared to be a breaded, fried baby’s foot in their frozen chicken dinner bought at a local supermarket. The police later identified the object as a piece of dough that a prankster had shaped to look like a baby’s foot. The police concluded that tampering took place before the frozen chicken pieces arrived at the supermarket.
Soup Mouse (2004) — scam
A woman and her son were eating at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in May 2004 when the woman found a mouse in her bowl of vegetable soup. She immediately began screaming, prompting many of the other restaurant patrons to leave. While it investigated the incident, Cracker Barrel stopped serving vegetable soup at all 497 of its restaurants nationwide. Police eventually concluded that the woman had placed the mouse in the soup herself in an attempt to extort money from the restaurant. An autopsy had shown that the mouse had died from a skull fracture, not from drowning in soup.
Fried Mouse (2003) — real
In September 2003 a man was eating a three-piece combo meal at a Popeye’s Fried Chicken in Baltimore when he bit down into a deep-fried mouse that had somehow gotten lodged in between the skin and the meat of the chicken. Police said that the complaint seemed to be legitimate. That restaurant had been cited for rodent infestations in the past.
Clam Condom (2002) — real
In Feb. 2002 a woman was eating a bowl of clam chowder at a McCormick and Schmick’s seafood restaurant in Irvine, CA when she bit down on something rubbery. She thought it was a piece of calamari, but when she spit it out into her napkin she discovered that it was a condom. She immediately complained and the restaurant manager took the condom from her. The woman later sued and won an undisclosed settlement from the restaurant. The restaurant itself tried to sue the supplier of the clam chowder, but a judge ruled in favor of the supplier.
Chicken McNoggin (2000) — real
On the night of November 27, 2000 a woman in Newport, News Virginia bought a box of chicken wings at a local McDonalds (the store was test-marketing fried chicken wings). Upon taking the meal home, she discovered an unpleasant surprise: a breaded, fried chicken head was included with the wings. She immediately contacted the media and a lawyer. Reporters who examined the head said that the batter on it did look exactly like the batter on the wings, so it didn’t seem to be something she had created herself. However the woman refused to turn the head over to McDonalds for examination. Whether she ever did sue the company, I don’t know. Lawyers doubted she would have received much in the way of a settlement, since she found the head before biting down into it.
Phony Finger (1987) — scam
In January 1987 two men in California informed police that they had found a human finger in a can of Juanita’s Menudo soup. The ‘finger’ turned out to be a piece of tripe (which is the muscular lining of beef stomach) carved to look like a finger. The men had placed the object in the soup themselves.
