A couple's New Year's Eve celebration came to a halt after making a grisly discovery in a bag of Safeway-brand Spanish peanuts.

A human tooth.

That is the claim made by Michaela Epp after her boyfriend, Graham Calder, accidentally bit down and realized he wasn't eating a peanut.

"He spit it out and looked at it, and it was a tooth," she said. "So he started feeling around to make sure it wasn't his."

Broken up into three parts, with the root exposed, Epp said it appeared that a human tooth had been pulled right from someone's gum.

"It definitely didn't look like someone's tooth had just broken off," she said.

Epp called it an astounding way to ring in the New Year.

"It happened about 15 minutes after midnight, my boyfriend looked me and said, 'That's one way to start things,'" she said.

Both students, Calder, 18, was visiting Winnipeg while on break from school at the University of Lethbridge. His girlfriend, Epp, also 18, is a student at the University of Manitoba.

The brand of Spanish peanuts is distributed by Safeway Inc., which operates out of Calgary. According to the product label, the peanuts are processed in Canada. Epp said they purchased the sealed bag of peanuts at the Osborne Village Safeway location.

A spokeswoman for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said they have received the complaint and will be following up.

Epp said a representative from the CFIA will be picking up the mysterious item on Monday for testing.

The incident will be looked into fully by Safeway once the CFIA has the results of the testing, said Betty Kellsey, a spokeswoman for the company.

"Safeway is committed to industry leading food safety standards and we will cooperate fully with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in their investigation," Kellsey said in an email statement from the company.

For Epp and Calder, they just want answers to what was inside that bag of peanuts.

"I personally just want them to look at it and see that this problem gets solved," she said.

GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT

A sampling of odd and awful things found in food products over the years

• In 2006, an Illinois man sued after he allegedly bit into an animal tooth in a container of Planter’s peanuts.

• It turns out, finding a knife in Subway sandwich bread isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime thing. In 2008, a Queens, N.Y., man found a seven-inch blade in the bread of his sandwich. That same year, a couple in the UK found a four-inch knife in one of their sandwiches from the popular chain.

• In Bloomington, Ill., in 2008, a man found an intact lizard in his salad at Applebee’s.

• In 2012, an Atlanta woman found a nose ring in her daughter’s breakfast burrito at McDonald’s.

• In 2011, a man in Michigan claimed he found a mouse in a bag of packaged salad.

• A woman in Texas claimed to have eaten half a BLT and fries at a Cracker Barrel in Houston before finding human blood on the fries and plate.

• A teen in Salt Lake City, Utah was hospitalized in 2011 after biting into a green pill found in trail mix.

• A man found a dead mouse baked into a loaf of bread in England in 2010.

• During the Beijing Olympics in 2008, it came to light that paper clips were found in muffins being consumed by Olympians.

• In 2012, a Manhattan man found a bandage cooked into his meal at Chinese restaurant, Friend House.

kristin.annable@sunmedia.ca

Twitter @ kristinannable