"I totally freaked"

ALL a Port Elizabeth housewife wanted was a white bread sandwich, but what she got instead was a dead mouse inside the sealed loaf of bread.

“I feel sick to my stomach,” Julia Lottering said after her nauseating discovery.

Lottering, who lives in Sanctor, Bethelsdorp, found the mouse after she bought a loaf of Sasko bread from Shoprite in the Cleary Park Shopping Centre.

“I went to gym in the morning and on my way home I bought a load of bread from Shoprite. It was on the floor in a bread crate and I just picked one loaf up and went to pay,” she said.

“At about 11am I was hungry and decided to make a sandwich. I took the first three slices of bread out before noticing little black spots.”

She asked her domestic helper Sylvia Booito to check the rest of the loaf with her.

“She is much braver than I am. She carried on looking in the packet and found a dead mouse inside the middle of the loaf,” Lottering said.

“It looks like it ate through the packet as there was a small hole on the side. I don’t know if the small hole was from that mouse or maybe another one. I totally freaked when I saw the mouse. I feel so sick.”

The mouse however did not appear to be baked in the bread.

“I want to know why and how this mouse died inside the bread,” she said.

“It is very concerning and it will really take me a long time before I eat bread again.”

Lottering contacted Sasko Bakeries in Haupt Street, Sidwell in Port Elizabeth to inform them about the incident and the bakery sent a representative to fetch the loaf at about 5pm.

“They said that they are going to follow up with Cleary Park Shoprite as well. They did say they would follow up with me once they have looked into the incident,” she said.

Sasko Bakeries quality manager Reinette Greyling refused to comment and referred queries to general manger, Piet Burger. His office did not answer their phones when contacted. Cleary Park Shopping Centre Shoprite manager Nathan Whitebooi said he was not aware of the incident before hanging up.