Pieces of string are not a usual filling for a sandwich - but for one woman that was nearly what she ate.

Charlotte Salmon with her stringy meal

Charlotte Salmon, of Langham Drive, Clacton, had made lunch for herself and her friend Amanda Bresnan, using a Kingsmill white square loaf, she had bought from the town's Safeway superstore.

She said: "My friend took a bite and saw there was something in it - there was string in the bread."

She said she checked the other slices of the loaf and the string was in them as well. Miss Salmon said she had been going to use the slices for her seven-year-old son Joshua's lunch but luckily decided to give him bread rolls to take to school instead.

Ian MacEwan, technical director at Allied Bakeries, which makes Kingsmill, said: "We take all customer complaints extremely seriously.

"We have rigorous hygiene and safety procedures in place at all of our bakeries, which makes this type of contamination extremely unlikely.

"Until we have analysed the sample at our laboratory we cannot comment on how this happened."

A spokeswoman for Safeway said: "We would ask the customer to bring the product into the store so we can reimburse her and send it off to be checked."

Published Wednesday, March 13, 2002