After a lifetime of avoiding meat, a vegetarian was given a nasty shock when he bit into his favourite snack.

Mohamed Hussein, of Brent Park Road, Hendon, was outraged after a cheese and onion pasty he bought from Tesco, in Brent Cross, last week turned out to contain chicken.

The 47-year-old chartered civil engineer said: “I was doing my weekly shop and picked up the pasty. I got to the car and took a bite, and realised it was chicken.

“It’s absolutely disgusting and shocking. For religious reasons, if it had been bacon or ham, I would have hit the roof.”

The pasty:

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Mr Hussein has received a refund and an apology from head office, but now wants to raise awareness about his case to stop it happening to someone else.

He added: “It could have affected anybody. What if it was someone with an allergy? I want to make people aware of what’s happening. We had the scare with horse meat and now we have this. It could have been a labelling problem but how do we know? Do they have any set quality procedure?

“I have no desire to claim any compensation, I just want an answer for why this happened and make sure all the other products go through far better quality assurances.”

A Tesco spokesman said: “We have strict processes in place to ensure products are correctly labelled. In this case we made a mistake and have apologised to Mr Hussein for the distress this may have caused. Our team have conducted a full investigation and no other products have been found to be wrongly labelled.”