HOUMA — A Bayou Blue woman says she found a bloody Band-Aid in a raw chicken prepared at a Houma supermarket last week.
The company’s president acknowledged the mistake, but accused the woman of trying to use the incident to extort money from the supermarket chain and is consulting with law enforcement officials.
Shanta Simmons says the St. Charles Street Rouses store gave her a new chicken, a refund and an apology after she found the offending bandage Saturday. But she claims she wants a change in policy that requires butchers to wear gloves while handling meat, a request she says the Rouses corporate office refused.
Her response has been to tell anybody who will listen, including posting a video of the chicken on YouTube and writing about it on The Courier and Daily Comet’s online forums, Facebook and Twitter. She also has printed fliers to distribute throughout the community.
“It wasn’t just a Band-Aid, it was a bloody Band-Aid,” said Simmons, 31, a mother of three who says she’s a private forensic death investigator. “You have no idea how mad they have made me. We’re taking our business elsewhere.”
Company President Donald Rouse said Rouses employees gave Simmons a refund and offered to file a report with their insurance company if she felt she was harmed in any way. But he says she asked them how much money they would give her to keep quiet about the incident and not broadcast it around the community.
“She’s trying to blackmail us,” Rouse said. “We’ll stand by our reputation. We will never pay money to someone like this.”
Rouse also said she never asked for a change in policy. Any butcher with a cut or wearing a bandage is already required to wear gloves by Rouses policy and state health regulations, he said.
As the state’s largest independent grocer, occasionally food mishaps will happen, he said. Normally, he said, they wouldn’t want to make an issue of it. But in this case, he said, Rouses employees plan to meet with the Terrebonne Sheriff’s Office and District Attorney’s Office today to explore filing charges against Simmons.
Simmons, however, denies asking for money.
“I never did ask them for money because I know that’s a crime,” she said. “They can try to file extortion charges, but they won’t stick because I never asked for any money.”
Rather, Simmons says she has been a longtime fan of the St. Charles Street store. She used to work there as a young woman, and she would drive there to shop from Bayou Blue, where she just bought a home, she said.
But last weekend, Simmons bought a chicken for her mother to cook and asked a butcher to cut it into pieces. She accepted the wrapped chicken and paid for her groceries.
But when she got home and took off the top layer of wrapping, there it was: A used bandage, stained with blood, visible under the plastic wrap.
Disgusted, she took it back to the store. The employees apologized and gave her another chicken, but she asked to be contacted by someone from the corporate office.
She got a call on Sunday and requested that the employee not be fired, but that the store change its policy on handling meat so that the butchers wear gloves.
She says she was told no changes would be made because the store has a “legal team to protect us.”
