McDonald’s apologises after vegetarians find chicken nuggets in their meals

'I’ve been veggie my whole life and this has literally put me in tears'

Twitter (@emma_longley)

McDonald’s has apologised after customers reported finding meat in vegetarian meals across the UK.

The fast-food chain launched its spicy veggie wrap earlier this month. It’s supposed to contain red pesto, a vegetarian goujon, relish, tomato, lettuce and red onion, but Twitter users have been posting photos of the wraps appearing to contain chicken nuggets.

“I ordered a spicy veggie wrap from one of your stores and thanks to the sheer incompetency of some of your staff I’ve been given chicken,” wrote one person. “I’ve been veggie my whole life and this has literally put me in tears as I ingested part of this wrap thinking it was veggie.”

Another user made the same complaint a few days later, uploading a video that showed a “Spicy Veggie One” wrap in its corresponding packaging that also appeared to contain chicken.

“Hi @McDonalds just ordered the veggie wrap from your store in Byker, turns out you gave me chicken!!!!!!” they wrote.

“This is disgraceful I’m fuming was so looking forward to this!!! I’m a strict vegetarian and just took a mouthful of chicken, thanks a lot.”

According to numerous reports on Twitter, this has been happening across the UK since the wrap launched.

Rebecca Butcher, 21, told BBC Newsbeat that she’d heard about the issue prior to buying a veggie wrap on 22 January, but was disgusted to find that it did indeed have chicken in it.

“I gave it a bit of time so it hopefully wouldn’t happen to me,” she said. “I was kind of shocked that weeks later, they’re still getting it wrong.”

A McDonald’s spokesperson acknowledged that it was not acceptable to serve meat when a vegetarian product had been ordered.

The spokesperson said: “We would like to apologise to any customer who has experienced this.

“We would also like to reassure that we have a number of procedures in place to avoid inaccurate orders, and that, after we saw that mistakes were being made, we introduced a number of additional measures in our kitchens and communicated with all stores to reduce inaccuracies quickly and effectively. This action has led to an increase in order accuracy and a reduction in contact from our customers, however we are disappointed that mistakes are still being made.

“We never want to disappoint customers, and any inaccuracy is not good enough. We would encourage anyone with any concerns to contact our customer services team.”