Posted: March 12th, 2009 - 9:30pm by Ben Chapman

According to Metro (UK)  Andrea Smith has been put off peppers for life after finding a field mouse while making dinner:

'My partner poured the peppers into a pan and was startled to find a clump of mouse fur and intestines falling out of the bag,' said the 37-year-old.

'After leaving it to defrost you could see the slice marks – it looked as if it had passed through a shredder with the peppers. The sight and thought of it made me feel sick. Mice carry all sorts of germs and there is no telling what my family could have caught.'

Miss Smith, a mother of one, bought the bag from her local Morrisons supermarket in Gosport, Hampshire.

A manager was sent round to collect the corpse and carried out an investigation. Tests revealed it was a field mouse.

Bosses described the incident as a one-off and wrote a letter of apology to Miss Smith, in which they offered her a bottle of wine and vouchers to spend in store.

'I think the memory is going to stay with me for a long time,' said Miss Smith.

A Morrisons spokesman thanked her for 'bringing this to our attention'.

'We take the quality and the safety of all the products that we sell very seriously indeed,' the spokesman added.

'We would like to reassure her and our customers that this is an isolated incident.'