British Girl Nearly Choked on Mask Found Inside McDonald’s Chicken Nugget

Lorenz Duchamps
By Lorenz Duchamps
August 5, 2020UK
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British Girl Nearly Choked on Mask Found Inside McDonald’s Chicken Nugget
Discarded blue protective face masks lie on the ground during the novel coronavirus pandemic on June 20, 2020. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

A mother said she was furious after her 6-year-old daughter nearly choked to death on a blue surgical-type mask that was cooked into her McDonald’s chicken nugget.

The incident happened on Tuesday after Laura Arber, 32, returned home from picking up her order at a McDonald’s restaurant in Aldershot, Hampshire, together with three of her children, local British news outlet Hampshire Live reported.

After Arber returned home, the mother-of-four claimed she noticed her young daughter choking while eating her food on the sofa.

“My little daughter just started choking and I put my fingers down her throat to loop it out there was just blue with the sick,” Arber told Hampshire Live.

“I thought what on earth is this?! I didn’t even think it could be the chicken nugget but looked over at the box and all you could see was this blue coming out of another chicken nugget in the box of 20,” she continued.

Arber can be seen opening one of the chicken nuggets in a video published by BBC. The short clip, originally posted to Facebook, shows the surgical mask cooked into the McNugget, “like a part of the mixture,” she explained.

“You can see how it is compacted into the chicken,” Arber said as she opened the nugget, presenting the blue material inside it that seems to be mixed into the nugget.

Arber told Hampshire Live she always held the international fast food company in high esteem after her son was born in intensive care. She said that during that time, she was able to stay in a place provided by McDonald’s for families whose children are very ill in the hospital.

A McDonald's sign
A McDonald’s sign is seen in a file photo. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

She later shared her experience in a since-deleted post on Facebook urging others to be careful.

“What if I had walked out of the room and my daughter had choked?” she said.

“She could have died. It’s a split-second thing,” she continued. “I am just thinking, we have just come out of a pandemic and there is a face mask in my child’s chicken nugget.”

The McDonald’s branch has since apologized for the incident and said in a statement it was “very sorry to hear about this customer’s experience” and offered Arber a full refund, the Daily Mail reported.

“Food safety is of the utmost importance to us and we place great emphasis on quality control, following rigorous standards to avoid any imperfections,” a McDonald’s spokesperson said.

“When the matter was brought to the attention of our staff, we apologized, offered a full refund, and asked the customer to return the item so we could further investigate the matter and isolate the affected product.”

Many McDonald’s restaurants in the UK and Ireland opened their doors again for Britons from July 22, after imposing 4 months of lockdown restrictions.

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