Buyer Opens Tuna Can, Finds a Joint

The black spot in the can of tuna made Rita Shafer curious. What looked like a partly smoked marijuana cigarette on the lid made her incredulous.

“I couldn’t believe it was there,” Shafer said Wednesday, the day after she opened the can of Bumble Bee albacore tuna to make lunch for her 3-year-old daughter Brandi.

Bumble Bee can’t quite believe it either, and a spokeswoman said the company wants to look at the can.

“We’ve never had anything like this happen,” said Deborah Streeter, administrator of consumer affairs for Bumble Bee. “It’s very serious, if it’s true. We’ve taken the code and we’re tracking where and when it was packed.” The can was sealed in California.

Shafer said she thinks she bought the water-packed tuna at the Grand Union store in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. The lot number was SWPDP2XTD2.

Bumble Bee asked her to send the can back to its headquarters in San Diego.

No recall is contemplated, Streeter said.

Streeter said the company has stringent quality control standards and such an incident is unlikely. She said the tuna was still safe because the product goes through a heat sterilization process to kill germs and bacteria.

Shafer said she figured someone either put it in the can as a joke or was stealing a smoke and had to hide it because a supervisor was about to walk by.

The incident “really blew my mind,” she added.