A shopper made the grisly discovery of what appeared to be a piece of human bone in a pair of socks from Primark.
After making the bizarre find at the clothing retailer's store in Colchester last month, the customer reported the discovery to the police on 2 January. An investigation is underway. The socks are thought to have been purchased on 10 December.
Now, Essex Police are working with Primark, which has contacted suppliers regarding the incident, to identify where it came from.
Police has said that the fragment did "not appear be a result of recent trauma and had no skin or other particles surrounding it."
However, the force did acknowledge that the thing found was "what is believed to be part of a human bone."
Primark has apologised 'for any distress caused' and added that there did not appear to have been any evidence of an 'incident' at the factory.
The spokesperson for Essex Police added: "Without further testing officers cannot be certain of the origin or age of the bone.
"We are liaising with the store who, in turn, are speaking to their suppliers for more information on this incident.
"Inquiries are ongoing."
Authorities also said that until further testing is carried out it will be impossible to identify the age or origin of the bone.
Primark released a statement that read: "Primark clearly takes this matter very seriously and has already carried out an investigation at our supplier's factory where the socks were made.
"No evidence of any kind exists to suggest that any incident has occurred in the factory, so it is highly probable that this object was placed in the socks by an individual for unknown reasons.
"Primark has been the subject of isolated incidents in the past which have subsequently been found to have been hoaxes.
"The factory has been used by other retailers and subject of many audits over many years.
"Primark sincerely apologises to the customer who found the item for any distress caused."
This sort of thing happens relatively often, to be quite honest. Obviously, it is rare for a bit of human bone to be found, but someone did claim to have found a dead mouse in their Lidl rice not so long ago.
Richard Leech discovered what looked for all the world like a dead rodent back in October, but the supermarket quickly got back to him to say that it was, in actual fact, mould.
Oh, great. I mean, not ideal, but not an actual dead creature. Every cloud, right?
Lidl released a lengthy statement that read: "It is never our intention for a customer to be dissatisfied in any way, and we were extremely sorry to see that this particular product did not meet the high standards that both we and our customers expect.
"Following contact with the customer, the matter was immediately escalated to our quality assurance team who, through their initial investigation with the supplier, were able to identify the foreign substance as mould. Whilst very rare, this can occur as a result of an extremely small hole in the pack.
"We only ever work with reputable accredited suppliers who have extensive controls and procedures in place to verify the quality of products. We are, therefore, very disappointed that our expected high standards were not met on this occasion and are in ongoing contact with the customer on the matter."
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