'Tooth' found in pizza proves too hard to stomach

CHRISTINE CORNEGE/ The Marlborough Express

NASTY SURPRISE: Blenheim resident Jade found what she and partner Hu Son claim is a human tooth in a pizza, similar to the one pictured. Inset: The object found in Hu Son's Domino's pizza. He claims it is a tooth.

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A Blenheim man claims he bit into a human tooth in his Domino's pizza, only for the foreign object to be mistakenly destroyed in a laboratory bungle before identification was made.

Blenheim resident Hu Son got a shock when when he bit down on something hard in the pizza he and partner Jade bought for their dinner.

"I thought it was a piece of bacon, then I took it out and I went, `What the hell is that?"' Mr Son said.

"I was disgusted. I thought, `How could this happen?"'

He took it back immediately to Domino's Pizza Blenheim branch, which sent the mysterious object to a lab for further testing and asked Mr Son to fill in a complaint form.

A few days later, Domino's quality control department rang Mr Son to say the pizza and the object had been destroyed. Included was an apology from Domino's Pizza Australia head office.

"I think it definitely is [a tooth] but they can't prove it because they lost it. I just wanted to know what it was," Mr Son said.

As well as it being a "yukky" find, Mr Son said there were also health concerns.

He claimed the worst-case scenario was that the specimen could have got stuck in his stomach without him realising, or caused some infection.

He described it as a "lack of responsibility" on Domino's Pizza's part.

However, Domino's Pizza New Zealand general manager Ryan Bohm said the company had been denied the opportunity to confirm what the object was, because the lab tested on its behalf.

"At the moment, it could be a piece of bone, a hardened vege, part of packaging, or something as simple as a stalk of an onion. It's a hard one to nail down," Mr Bohm said.

AsureQuality Auckland's laboratory tested for food poisoning rather than a foreign object, which resulted in the object being destroyed, he said. The lab had "let them down".

The company took the situation "very seriously" and had refunded Mr Son's purchase and offered a replacement meal, Mr Bohm said.

More than seven million pizzas were sold in New Zealand per year, attracting five foreign object complaints, he said. No foreign objects had been found.

The company was now getting a forensic scientist to analyse the photos.

Five Marlborough dentists who were shown the photos of the object said they were "inconclusive" and they needed to see the actual object before making a decision.

One dentist said it might be a child's tooth, or possibly a canine, but it was impossible to tell without examining the evidence.

They said the object "could be anything".

- The Marlborough Express