On Sunday 19 March, Tom Lukas of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, reportedly found an animal bone in a bag of Whole Foods Trail Mix, he reported the incident to Chasing News. After purchasing the box at a store, Lukas was driving and eating handfuls of it. The bag contains almonds, cashews, cranberries raisins, blueberries, walnuts and raspberries. That's why when he bit down on something very hard, he says he knew something was wrong. Then he pulled out something he didn't want to see from his mouth
Working in the medical field, Tom says he knew it looked like an animal bone.
"We got the trail mix, its the 365 Berry Bounty Trail Mix from Whole Foods and I took a huge mouthful and I bit down on something hard and I pulled it out and examined it while I was driving and I handed it to my wife and asked her hey, 'does this look like its a bone?' She said yes, so I dumped it back in the bag and we called Whole Foods immediately," Lukas said.
Tom wrote a complaint that was taken and signed by the manager at the Cherry Hill Whole Foods.
He also filed a complaint with the Camden County Board of Health.
Tom then took the bone to his local vet who confirmed that it was, indeed, a small mammal bone.
For another look, pictures were sent to another expert. Dr. Kyla Beguesse, a Zoological Pathology fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has a special interest in paleopathology for consultation.
Based on the morphology and size of the bone, she concluded that the bone most closely resembled a bone from the tarsal region of a small mammal. Additionally, the size reference in the photographs suggested this bone was too large to belong to the common domestic rat or mouse.
After the bone was investigated, Chasing News actually headed back to the Cherry Hill Whole Foods, and not surprisingly, there was a step stool in the aisle of the trail mix and all of the Berry Bounty Trail Mix bags were immediately removed. There was a sticker that said "temp out" where they once were.
The Chasing New team reached out to Whole Foods for comment, and their statement is puzzling. After sending them multiple high-quality photos of the bone,
the statement of Dr. Kyla Beguesse, a fellow of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who confirmed that it was a specific bone from a small mammal and confirmation from two other veterinarians who examined the bone, in-person, that the item is, in-fact, a bone.
This is Whole Foods statement:
"Because the Chasing News team has withheld the results of any lab examination of the object allegedly found in one of our products, we cannot speak directly to this claim. Whole Foods Market is deeply committed to quality assurance and transparency, which cannot be said of Chasing News."
Source: fox29.com
