Coles has taken the drastic move of removing its home brand kidney beans from shelves in WA after an horrific find in a can of the product — with a mum finding a dead rat inside.
Adelaide mother Lauren Whitburn told 7NEWS Adelaide that she had bought the red kidney beans from Mt Barker Coles last Saturday (March 2) and later poured them into strainer.
She immediately noticed something was amiss.
“The closer I looked, the more apparent a claw became,” Ms Whitburn said. “It was like an arm or a leg crunched up, and I was like, ‘That is clearly an animal’.
“It was pretty disgusting — you could also see hair and bone.”
Ms Whitburn reported the find to Coles the following day.
“A lot of my concern has come from not only have I got this part of a rat, which looks like a leg and maybe a tail … it’s the fact that it could be in multiple cans of beans and people could be eating it.”
A Coles spokesman said the supermarket was investigating how the rat made its way into the container.
“Food safety is paramount at Coles,” he said. “We are concerned to hear about this customer’s experience and discovery with this product, and we are currently investigating with our supplier.
“Our suppliers take great care when processing all our products and include equipment and teams that conduct raw material inspections, pest control and quality checks during processing.
“We have apologised to the customer for their experience and have commenced an immediate investigation with our supplier.”
The shocking find has resulted in Coles withdrawing the sale of its home brand red kidney beans from shelves in WA, SA, NT, Broken Hill in NSW and Mildura in Victoria.
Ms Whitburn’s horror discovery comes after a similar incident involving another Adelaide customer in December 2023.
The customer shared a video on TikTok of what they claimed was a “baby rat” discovered in a Coles brand of chick peas.
