Some Tesco Shoppers Found ‘Glowing Green Meat’ In Their Christmas Turkeys

Some Christmas revelers in England were horrified to discover a disgusting surprise inside the turkeys they’d purchased from Tesco. The turkeys contained fluorescent green meat that seemed to glow.

As The Independent reports, the problem of green turkey meat seems to have been limited to just a few families who purchased their Christmas turkeys from Tesco locations in and around Shropshire. Tesco, for those not familiar, is a British grocery and general merchandise chain.

Rachael James, 33, paid £30 (about $37) for her family’s Christmas turkey at a Tesco location in Whitchurch. She brought it home, dutifully thawed it, basted it, lovingly tended to it while it was in the oven. Then on Christmas Day, with her whole family gathered around the table, she cut it open.

“When I got it out of the packaging it seemed to be okay but once I had cooked it and started to carve it in front of everyone I noticed that there was something wrong with the center of the turkey.”

“Something wrong” indeed. Here is what she found inside her turkey:

https://t.co/D7yd7juGbC Hungry Brits horrified after finding GREEN meat inside their Christmas turkey https://t.co/bwApLJr7xG pic.twitter.com/dghDWgLWns

— UK News Information (@AnglosearchNews) December 28, 2016

“It put everyone off their meal and ruined the meal, none of us felt like we could eat any of the turkey and ended up having the whole meal with no turkey. It ruined the meal completely, this was a meal that we had all been looking forward to for months as we have a had a stressful year.”

Ms. James and her family weren’t the only Tesco shoppers to have their Christmases ruined by green meat in their turkeys. Steve Parsons, 26, and his partner Emma, 28, tell The Express that their Christmas was also almost ruined by a gross Tesco turkey.

“It put a downer on the whole day. Luckily one of my friends kindly had a joint of beef that we could use which meant the day wasn’t completely ruined.”

Fortunately, Tesco has made things right with the disgusted customers. They’ve been given a full refund, a £75 ($92) gift voucher, and two free turkeys.

“There’s nothing more important than the quality of the food we sell so we were concerned to hear this has happened. We’ve offered a refund to the customers affected and will inform our supplier.”

The problem of green turkeys was limited to only a handful locations in and around Shropshire. Because Tesco sources all of its turkeys locally, it seems that the problem of the green meat can be traced to one or two suppliers.

In fact, it’s pretty obvious what caused the disgusting green meat: a poultry disease called, wait for it, Green Muscle Disease. It occurs when the bird’s breast muscles develop in a way that interrupts circulation, causing some muscle tissue to turn green. Fortunately, it’s not harmful to eat it, although it’s indescribably unappetizing.

Since most poultry eaters favor the breast meat, modern poultry processing results in birds that have more meat in the breast area than the birds would otherwise have in the wild. This has led to a whole host of issues in the birds, according to the National Institutes of Health, including some issues that may wind up on your plate. Besides the sickly green meat that Tesco shoppers found, you may also wind up with turkey meat that has unappetizing white stripes.

Clearly, the best way to avoid diseased, disgusting turkey meat is to swear off poultry raised on modern, factory farms.

[Featured Image by pathdoc/Shutterstock]