Glass found in Asda bread

Supermarket giant Asda has been hit with a £21,000 fine for threatening public health after it sold loaves of bread containing wood, glass and even a necklace, and left glass on the bakery floor.

Asda admitted to magistrates nine counts of breaching food hygiene laws and three of having a foreign body in food at the company's store in Sutton, south-west London.

The breaches began in March 2001, the court was told, when a customer found a metal chain in hot cross buns.

Over the next few months customers complained after finding a jagged piece of wood in a wholemeal loaf and glass in a French stick. Environmental-health officers visited the bakery and found ovens with missing screws that could have fallen into loaves, shattered glass from an oven bulb on the floor, and flour being wrongly stored.

A Trading Standards Institute spokesman said: "It's incredible this could happen so many times in a short amount of time." Asda, owned by US firm Wal-Mart, said it had changed practices at the store. "Standards fell to below an acceptable level," a spokesman said.