A Strongsville woman has some beef with chicken.
Emily Trenka purchased some chicken tenderloins at a Giant Eagle to cook for and her boyfriend the next day. When she cooked it, everything was fine. When she was ready to eat it, she discovered something disgusting inside not suited for her taste buds.
"It was so disgusting," she said.
The chicken was deformed and also appeared to have something stuffed into it. It was also discolored.
She returned the chicken and got her money back.
But what exactly was inside of the chicken?
Trenka posted in a local Strongsville Facebook Page to get answers. It immediately caught people’s attention, but no one knew what it was. We also set out to get answers, but the experts we spoke to weren’t sure either.
"No I smelled a lot of smells from chicken, but I've never seen anything quite like that,” said Health Commissioner in Salem, Lynlie Hayes.
“That's an odd thing,” said Tony Pinzone, a meat cutter at Pinzone’s, who’s reacting to a picture of the chicken.
Pinzone has been a meat cutter for nearly 50 years. He says it could be anything, but hard to tell from just a picture.
“Anything [like] some growth inside meat. Just like you would have a cyst on your arm. it’s similar with humans and animals,” he said.
He knows no one would do something like that intentionally, he said.
Hayes has inspected a countless number of restaurants. She gave her best educated guess. Hayes couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she has an idea.
“Probably a meat glue. which is used in processing meat which is used as a processing aid,” she said. “It was kind of in the center of the chicken, which is normally where they would put the meat glue together."
She says “meat glue”, which is also called Transglutaminase, is FDA approved. It's used in most meat products, she said. Hayes added it’s unlikely that you will get sick from it.
Trenka’s response to eating it, ”Oh my God, no."
And Hayes agrees. She says she wouldn’t eat it either. She added if it looks nasty, play it safe and chuck it.
The experts say the government’s food regulations are very strict, so the odds of chicken looking like the one Trenka bought is very rare. Yet, they added mistakes do happen. if an abnormal piece of meat comes across your dinner table, make sure to give your local health department a call.