A woman who discovered a rotting goldfish in the Pepsi bottle she had just started to drink has shaken the confidence of Chinese cola drinkers.

The woman reportedly bought a 600ml bottle of Pepsi at a Shaanxi province supermarket, and after taking her first swig noticed something red floating inside.

On closer inspection this turned out to be a 6-7cm long and 3-4cm wide goldfish, in an advanced state of decomposition.

Efforts to pass the blame swiftly ensued – the supermarket claims that as the goldfish looked to have been dead for some time, it must have been accidentally introduced at the bottling plant.

However, the neck of the bottle was only 2.5cm wide, raising some unsavoury possibilities as to just how it ended up in the bottle – it having been deliberately put in being the most obvious one, although this being China the possibility of a bottle housing the fish having been recycled does not seem entirely implausible.

Pepsi says it is “hard to determine” how the fish ended up in the bottle and offered the woman 2 cases of its fine beverage by way of compensation for her disgusting and health-threatening experience, which she unsurprisingly declined.