【2004 Archives】

LONDON -- Finding an unidentified object in one's food004 Archivesnever a pleasant experience -- but there's something even more disturbing about finding an object you can't even identify.

SEE ALSO: British woman gets an unwelcome surprise in her supermarket garden salad

Richard Noon, a 33-year-old CRM manager at the University of Huddersfield, recently had just such an experience.

On Wednesday, he opened a bag of Burts Potato Chips only to discover a hard brown lump occupying the majority of the packet.

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"We found it in a sealed bag in my local pub," Noon told Mashable. "It is large, so took up most of the packet -- it was pretty much just sat there!"

Let's go in for a close-up on that.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"No idea what the object is," said Noon.

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"I suspect it may be a clump of something that has fallen off a machine during cooking. Maybe a lump of seasoning or something, it is quite heavy and curved on the inside. I'm surprised their QA (Quality Assurance) processes didn't spot it (i.e. weight control, etc.)."

Noon said Burts Chips have since been in touch with him on social media, and they're working to get to the bottom of it.

"They didn't say what it was, they are sending an envelope out to send it back to them," he said. "They've already done something in the production side to make sure it doesn't happen again. Quite positive when you get to speak to them!"

Mashablehas reached out to Burts Chips and we will update this article if we receive a response.

UPDATE: Dec. 22, 2016, 1:12 p.m. GMT A spokesperson from Burts Chips contacted Mashablewith the following statement.

“We take food safety and quality very seriously and are sorry for any upset caused. The lump is likely a cluster of overcooked potato chips which have unfortunately slipped through our quality checks, as a direct result of this we will be increasing the frequency of checks made by our team of fryers so this does not happen again.

"We have been consulting with Mr Noon since this issue came to light.”

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