A PETERSFIELD pensioner is considering legal action against Tesco after a dressmaker’s pin in a piece of cheese she ate has left her with a £3,000 dental bill.

Penny Curran (71), a loyal Tesco customer for years, is fuming after the supermarket chain refused to cover the cost of the treatment.

After investigating her complaint, and concluding the pin did not come from the cheese supply chain, Tesco says it will not be taking the matter further.

Penny, of Rother House, in Nyewood, feels she has been treated dismissively and will take the company to court if things are not resolved.

It has been a month since she unwrapped for lunch the Ossau Iraty ewes’ milk cheese, bought from the Petersfield store, bit into a piece and hit the inch long pin. “To my horror there was embedded in the cheese a dressmaker’s pin,” she said. “Very fortunately I did not swallow it as the outcome might well have been a lot worse.”

An examination by her dental surgeon, Robert Herron in Liphook, found that she needed her four tooth bridge replaced and her chipped front tooth restored, at a cost of £2,931.

Penny, a former Foreign Office employee and a stalwart of the community, does not see why she should have to fork out for this.

There is also a risk of premature loss of her teeth if the work is left too long, according to the dental report.

Penny says the management in the Petersfield Tesco store, where she took the cheese, the pin and a piece of broken tooth within an hour of the incident, have been very helpful.

But, despite e-mails to customer services at head office, she feels she has hit a brick wall. She has asked for the pin back to have it independently analysed.

A Tesco spokesman said: “We have a number of safety measures in place throughout the production and packaging process for this product, so we were surprised to hear about this incident. These measures include the product passing through a metal detector and a filter to separate anything solid.

“After a full investigation, we have concluded it is highly unlikely that the pin was packaged within the cheese when the item was purchased.”