KLTV 7 News Tyler, Longview, Jacksonville |Woman finds frog in frozen veggies

Woman finds frog in frozen veggies

By Courtney Lane - bio | email
Posted by Ellen Krafve - email

TYLER, TX (KLTV) - Chasity Erbaugh was heating up a Great Value brand of steamable green beans - making lunch for her kids when she discovered a nasty surprise.

"Thank goodness I had put butter in the bottom of the bowl," said Erbaugh. "I went to stir it and there's this brown clump."

After a close examination, Erbaugh was sick to her stomach at what she discovered. The "brown clump" was part of a frog. That's right. She found the whole front end of a frog, with the spinal cord and everything attached, in her green beans. The frog's tongue was even hanging out.

"That's a frog!" she said. "Or worse than that, it's part of a frog - 75% of it. They didn't even give me the frog legs with it."

Chasity bought the beans from the Walmart on Troup Highway. We gave the lot numbers to the health department, and Monday afternoon, they had the store pull the rest of the bags from that lot.

"What we try to do is coordinate with the manufacturer inspectors to make sure we can track it from our store back to the factory where it was made and back to the lot," said Brenda Elrod with the Northeast Texas Public Health District.

Since being made aware of the incident, a Food and Drug officer is now sending the complaint up to the FDA.

"When you're washing field vegetables, you're going to get certain little pieces and parts, but we certainly don't want something so large you can identify what it is."

As for Erbaugh, she says from now on, it's fresh veggies only.

"Do you know how much my grocery bill is about to go up?" said Erbaugh. "It really is. That is disgusting. I'm not buying that! I'm not buying any of them."

The Smith County Health Department told us anything that might make you sick, such as a frog, would probably have been destroyed in the cooking process. They say always do just what Chasity did, which is look closely at your food and check it before eating.

Walmart's spokesperson, Caren S. Epstein, Director of PR & Brand Reputation sent us the following statement:

• Walmart has directed the manufacturer to conduct an investigation and determine how this happened and inform us of what measures they will take to prevent a re-occurrence
• We have initiated a withdrawal on all units of this product with the same lot number
• Neither Walmart nor the manufacturer have received any other complaints regarding this product.
• The supplier will (if they have not already) contact the customer regarding the incident.

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