Sainsbury's recalls own-brand green olives after glass is found in jars

Sainsbury’s is advising customers who have purchased the affected jars to return them to their nearest store for a full refund (© Nevit Dilmen found at Wikimedia commons)

Sainsbury’s is investigating how jars of its own-brand green olives came to contain pieces of glass.

The supermarket has announced a recall of 350g jars of its Spanish Pitted Green Olives with a best before date of 13 January 2017 printed on the lid. It said it had no reason to suspect any malicious intent, but added that the investigation was still in its early stages.

Sainsbury’s is advising customers who have purchased the affected jars to return them to their nearest store for a full refund. The supermarket was alerted to the problem when a small number of customers complained, but it is understood that nobody has been injured or taken ill through eating the olives.

The supermarket said in a statement: “Glass has been found in a small number of jars of By Sainsbury’s 350g green pitted olives. We take food safety very seriously and have removed them from sale as a precautionary measure. We are working closely with the supplier and an investigation into how this happened is ongoing.”

Two weeks ago a mother from Bedford found shards of glass in a jar of black olives she had bought at a Sainsbury’s store in Clapham, south London. But a spokeswoman for the supermarket said the two events were a “total coincidence”.

Jasminder Lall, 57, bought the Spanish pitted black olives on 26 April, the Bedfordshire News reported. The next day she discovered the jar contained three sharp pieces of glass as her daughter was preparing a salad.

The spokeswoman said the company had looked into Mrs Lall’s complaint but had found no faults with other jars of black olives, which are produced by the same factory as the green olives but on a different production line.