A CHIPPENHAM woman was physically sick after crunching into a snail tucked away in a Tesco salad bought from her local store.

Vegetarian Kim Pothecary had bought the salad pot from Tesco Express on Hungerdown Lane in Chippenham.

After returning home the owner of a dog grooming salon tucked in to her meal of lettuce, red pepper and sweetcorn only to make the disgusting discovery.

“I was about three-quarters of the way through and there was this quite big crunch,” said Miss Pothecary, of Palmer Street.

“I thought that I had broken my tooth and moved it around a bit, but thought ‘this doesn’t feel right’.

“I spat it out and noticed there was this brown thing, and when I switched the big light on I could see that was the shell that I had crunched.

“I threw up four times that night. I’m actually a vegetarian and have been for 30 years, which makes it even worse.”

Miss Pothecary contacted Tesco’s customer service team last Tuesday, the day she bought the salad, to report the snail, in the hope that the remaining salad pots would be recalled.

“I did contact them that night, I didn’t expect my money for a refund, the point that I made was would the salad be recalled?” she said.

“They said they would offer a refund but I want to know how this has happened and what they are going to do to prevent it happening again?

“I’ve had this salad pot before and never had a problem but I’m never buying ready meal salad again from anywhere, which is a real problem for me as a vegetarian.”

A Tesco spokesman said: “We have extremely high standards for the products we put on our shelves and work hard to inspect our salad carefully. However, due to the freshness of our produce, issues like this can happen on very rare occasions.

“We have asked Miss Pothecary to return the salad so we can investigate with our supplier.”