The Alarming Freebie A Costco Customer Found In Their Roast

A Redditor posted under the subreddit r/Costco today that they discovered a broken needle nestled in their batch of Costco chuck roast. "I'm so glad I found it before someone bit into or swallowed it," the user wrote. The needle finder said they prepared the chuck roast for some family members. The appearance of the broken needle led them to eat the rest of their meal with caution — some of them ditched the roast altogether.

In the post, the Redditor questioned where the needle could have come from, but commenters chimed in to note that it was most likely the tip of an injector needle that was used during processing to either marinate or tenderize the meat. "Looks like the tip of an injector needle for marinating meat," one Redditor commented. "Could also be a tenderizer needle if the meat you bought wasn't marinated." Another user commented that meats are often injected with a solution to tenderize and impart more flavor.

The Redditor accompanied the post with a photo that compares the size of the needle to a pistachio, and they are approximately the same length. Many commenters, including the forum's moderator, suggested that the original poster return the food or contact Costco.

Foreign, sometimes dangerous, objects are often discovered in food. In 2023, Trader Joe's endured a series of recalls as a result of insects, metal scraps, and rocks found in its products. This sequence of foreign objects found in Trader Joe's food begged the question: how do these objects enter what we eat? One of the easiest ways to answer that question is mishaps that occur on food production lines, which seems to be what occurred in the Costco incident.

Quaker Oats, which has experienced a number of product recalls over the past few decades, once recalled its granola bars because metal pieces were found in them. Similar to the needle in the Costco roast, the shards of metal most likely came from broken factory machines.

Luckily, the Redditor's experience with the chuck roast does not seem malicious. However, there have been several situations where people place potentially harmful objects in mass-produced food, such as a Wisconsin sausage factory worker placing foreign objects in sausage links.