A nurse has claimed that she discovered a baby weasel in her pack of Asda salad.

Rifat Asghar, 42, was eating a carrot and sweetcorn meal from the supermarket for lunch when a colleague allegedly spotted a 'furry lump'.

The advanced nurse practitioner then reportedly inspected the two inch-long furball, and was 'disgusted' to discover a leg and tail, as well as 'what looked like an eye'.

She took the salad back to the store in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where she claims she was offered a £5 voucher. An investigation later revealed the 'foreign object' was a baby weasel, and staff offered Asghar £100 in vouchers, which she turned down.

Ashgar told the SWNS news agency: 'It has caused me a lot of trauma. I initially thought it was a mouse, and for about a week afterwards I had weird dreams about mice coming out my mouth.

'They say it was in there from when it was harvested. What happened to all the checks done after that happened? If something like that can go through all their processes and checks it worries me.

'It has completely changed the way I shop now and I can't buy any prepared food any more. I'm having to make it all myself. It was so traumatising.'

Supermarket bosses claim the furry animal must have been picked up in a field during harvesting and passed through the entire factory without being spotted.

An email from a team leader at Asda said the specimen was sent for testing at a lab in London, which revealed it was a young common weasel.

An Asda spokesperson said: 'We work hard to make sure our products are in the best possible condition for our customers to enjoy, so we're very sorry that on this occasion we let Ms Asghar down.

'We would like to reassure our customers that we have strict quality control measures in place for our fresh produce, and since this incident arose in November last year, we have worked with our suppliers and growers to assess these measures and to understand how this could have happened.

'We have also apologised directly and offered a gesture of goodwill to both Ms Asghar as well as as well as her colleague, who originally purchased the product.'