An 11-year-old girl was shocked when she opened her McDonald’s burger and saw “half had gone”.
Ashleigh Long had been eagerly awaiting the moment she could tuck into the quarter pounder she had ordered from the Hengrove Leisure Park restaurant.
But when she returned to her south Bristol home and had a look inside the burger, her excitement turned to shock.
Ashleigh’s mum Victoria, 39, said the quarter pounder looked “half-eaten”.
Victoria and her partner Dave had taken Ashleigh to McDonald’s at 5.20pm on Saturday, February 22.
'My burger's been eaten'
“We are regular customers there,” said Victoria. “It’s nice not to have to cook on a Saturday night.
“We brought our meals home. My poor little daughter had really been fancying a burger.
“She opened it up and said, ‘Mum, my burger’s been eaten.’
“I said, ‘Don’t be daft.’ Then I looked at it and I just went, ‘Oh my God.’”
Victoria was sickened by the contents of the burger bun.
She added: “You know how you get the meat sticking out round the outside of the bun?
"Well, it was like the edges had been nibbled away. Half had gone.
“It looked like there were bite marks, as if it had been chucked away and put back in the box.
“I don't know if the bite marks were human or animal, but I really don’t want to go to that restaurant again.”
'It turned my stomach'
Victoria could not face eating her own meal after seeing her daughter’s.
She said: “Dave and I chucked our food. I had a few bites of chips, but it just turned me off. It turned my stomach.
“I gave Ashleigh my burger to have instead, while Dave ordered a KFC.”
Dave complained online and received an offer of a free meal.
Victoria said: “I thought that was just not enough.”
Asked what she would have considered a fairer offer, she replied: “Just something would have been nice, maybe a voucher, not that I want to go there again.
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“Even before this, there were a few problems recently with the McDonald’s getting orders wrong. It seems standards have dropped.
“From now on we will probably go for a Chinese on Saturday evenings.”
What McDonald's says
A McDonald’s spokeswoman apologised for the quarter pounder Ashleigh received.
She said: “We place great emphasis on food quality control and follow rigorous standards in order to avoid any imperfections.
“We are sorry to learn that we fell short of these standards on this occasion, and that a procedural error occurred while assembling this product.
“We understand that the customer is in conversation with our Customer Services Team to help find a resolution.”
