Live frog found in Waitrose salad bag in Hampshire Published duration 12 September 2012

image caption The frog went unnoticed for a night, while the bag of salad was in Christina Carrington's fridge

A live frog has been found in a bag of salad leaves bought by a woman at a Hampshire supermarket.

Christina Carrington, 50, from Chandler's Ford, said she ate some of the salad before realising the frog was in the bag.

Mrs Carrington's daughter discovered the green and brown frog in the salad, purchased at Ringwood's Waitrose store.

In a statement, Waitrose apologised and said it was investigating this "isolated incident".

The palm-sized amphibian, thought to be a pool frog, went unnoticed on Sunday night in Mrs Carrington's fridge.

'Disgusted and angry'

She said: "The next day I opened the bag took out a portion for my lunch, sealed the bag with a food save clip, and put it back in the fridge.

image caption Waitrose described it as an "isolated incident"

"After I'd eaten lunch at work, I received a phone call from my hysterical daughter, screaming 'there's a frog in the salad bag in the fridge'.

Mrs Carrington said she was "disgusted and angry" and had not been able to eat salad since.

"You pay more for these prepared salads and trust they've been prepared properly," she said.

In a statement Waitrose said: "We are very sorry for the distress caused. All our bagged salad is thoroughly washed and we have steps in place to check each product before packaging.

"Although this is an isolated incident, we're investigating with our suppliers how this happened and taking steps to further minimise the chances of this happening again."

Juvenile frog

Once the frog was discovered Mrs Carrington said she was "not sure what to do with it", so kept the frog in her fridge for another night until it was collected by a member of staff from Waitrose.

"I turned the fridge [temperature] down and he seemed quite happy in there," she said.

"We quite liked him in the end, it was just when he hopped around in the bag - that freaked us out a bit."

Dr Silviu Petrovan from Froglife, a national amphibian and reptile conservation charity, said the frog was difficult to identify without specific body measurements and details of location found, but added it "could be a pool frog".