That’s a vark-up

A Muslim man was shocked to find that his local Pick n Pay retailer had been selling halaal sausage – with “pork” in it.

The outraged man did not mince his words after his discovery and immediately complained to staff who removed the wors from the shelf.

Galied Isaacs, 39, from Kenilworth, says he is a regular PnP customer and always does his shopping at the Kenilworth Centre branch.

“The reason I go to this Pick n Pay is because they have one of the largest halaal meat selections,” he explains.

The “Boerewors Farmstyle” sausage he bought had a large green halaal sticker issued by the Muslim Judicial Council Halaal Trust on it.

Galied says on Sunday, he quickly scanned the label of the packet of beef sausage to check the ingredients.

He explains: “I am on a Banting diet at the moment and checked the label to see if there were any carbs in the sausage. That’s when I noticed the haraam ingredients in the meat.”

The label indicated that the wors contained “27 percent pork” and the meat was wrapped in “hog casings”.

The disgusted customer immediately notified the butchery and staff removed all the sausage from the shelves.

Galied says he was concerned that other unsuspecting customers would make the same mistake with the sausage, which had been on sale and asked the store manager how the mistake crept in.

He claims the manager was “never-minded” and blamed it on human error.

“The way in which he spoke to me, it was as if he wanted me to forget about the problem.

“They don’t want to take responsibility for what happened,” a fuming Galied says.

He then tried contacting the MJC as well as Pick n Pay’s customer care service to get to the bottom of the matter, but says he got no response.

“Negligence like this needs to highlighted. The public needs to be made aware,” he insists.

David North, the Group Executive: Corporate Affairs at Pick n Pay, confirmed that they are aware of the incident, and that it was due to human error.

North says: “This was a case of mislabelling and the product was indeed 100 percent halaal.

“Pick n Pay is fully committed to proper and effective labelling so that customers can make informed choices and we apologised to the customer in the store. We work very hard to ensure that all information is accurate and have followed up this case with the store manager.”