New Covent Garden Soup

Hi everyone, I just wanted to share with you an experience I had with New Covent Garden Soup.

I bought a few of their Plum Tomato and Basil soups late last year, ate one, had no problems, then had a second one and found what I thought was meat in it :-( I put the pieces in my fridge, contacted them through their Facebook page, where they asked me to email in the batch number and sell by date. Unfortunately I had already thrown the packaging away, so I just left it.

I then had the third pack a day or so later and actually bit down on what seemed to be a piece of chicken (bleurgh!) so I then contacted them again and they asked me to send the 'foreign objects' in, and thankfully, I was able to pass on the batch number and sell by date this time. To be fair, I imagine the previous carton was from the same batch as I bought them at the same time.

Here is a photo of the letter I received:

Not sure how clear the picture is on others computer monitors, so Ive typed what it says below:


Their Reference: LD/CR/21348

27 January 2011

Dear _________,

We were concerned to receive your letter regarding your experience with our Plum Tomato & Basil Soup. Please accept my apologises for the delay in our reply.

Our soups are made in the same way as one would make them in a domestic kitchen. We do not use additives, colourings or preservatives and we pride ourselves on producing products of the finest quality.

The item you found was immediately passed to our Quality Assurance Team for inspection. It did appear to be a piece of meat.

As you kindly gave us the batch code and use by date from the carton we were able to look back on batches made on that day in the factory. No meat batches were made on this day prior to this soup. Therefore we are at a loss as to where this meat has come from. I can assure you that the vessels are thoroughly cleaned between batches.

A full report has been issued to the factory staff regarding this incident and more care is to be taken in future, along with thorough checks of the vessels in between batches. Also thorough checks will be done in the ingredients in case this came into our factory via them.

We are sorry for the distress our soup has caused you on this occasion and hope that you will accept the enclosed vouchers for £10.00 as a gesture of our goodwill. We hope that you will remain a valued and loyal customer of New Covent Garden Food in future.

Yours sincerely

Lynn Dickens
Customer Relations

I passed the vouchers to a meat eating friend and will no longer use New Covent Garden Soups. What really makes me feel quite ill, is, not only finding the meat in my soup, but the fact that they state that no meat soups were made that day, so how long exactly were those pieces of meat sitting in the tubes of their machines for, before ending up in my soup?! Doesnt bare thinking about!!