Snake found in cranberry sauce

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A St. Catharines family’s Thanksgiving dinner was ruined when they opened a can of cranberry dressing. Among the red sauce was a snake. According to Aimee Casciato, everyone at the table was grossed out by what they saw. Cindy Csordas spoke to her today.

When Aimee Casciato dug her spoon in to the cranberry sauce this weekend she found more than she wanted to. “And sort of lifted it out and went ‘aaahhhh!, it’s a snake in the cranberries.”

We sent the picture to Little Rays Reptile Zoo, and manager Steve Featherstone says it’s a garter snake. Ocean Spray manufactures the product that was sold to Aimee’s family member at the Zehrs in St. Catharines. Ocean Spray offered Aimee some coupons. “When she offered 10 dollars in coupons I said ‘are you kidding me? I’m not really interested in buying your product anymore’. So she said I’ll send you a 10 dollar rebate.”

Ocean Spray has several youtube videos that show their cranberry bogs in Massachusetts. The berries are harvested near water and reptiles.

“Just shock and horror that this could happen and considering the stages processed foods go through, I thought, where in the process could this have come in? Because it was intact.”

Little Rays manager says snakes look for warm places to crawl in to when fall approaches. He says if ingested there is a very small chance of salmonella poisoning.

Aimee contacted the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Tuesday. They came to her house, picked up the snake and the can of cranberries.

‘The kids are grossed out. My 8 year old said ‘mommy, I don’t want to eat anything from a can again.”

Ocean Spray says it’s investigating the incident, but due to the complexity of it’s manufacturing process it’s hard for it to see how the snake got in to one of its cans. Aimee says consumers have the right to know what happened.