Supermarket giant Tesco has come under fire after offering £10 compensation to the mother of a Bradford two-year-old whom she says choked on a piece of plastic in her ice cream.

Adele Beecham, of Barkerend, said she was horrified to discover her little girl Jessica chewing on a piece of plastic which she says was in the Tesco value ice cream she gave her daughter.

“Jessica loves ice cream,” she said. “The plastic, which we think is a screw fitting, was the same colour as the ice cream that’s why we didn’t see it.

“If I hadn’t turned round and seen her who knows what could have happened. If you’re an adult and you feel something like that in your food you would spit it out but a two-year-old doesn’t know.

“I took the container and the bit of plastic back to the store in Canal Road and demanded to know what they were going to do about it.

“I took some pictures of the container and the plastic before I took it back. They said it would be reported and looked into but we didn’t hear anything for weeks.

“We kept going back but they kept messing us about. Eventually after more than six weeks we received a letter and an offer of £10. It is an absolute insult. Is that the worth they put on the life of my daughter?

“This wasn’t a small piece of plastic it was like a plastic drawing pin and sharp.”

In a letter sent to Miss Beecham on August 17, Nafees Khan, Tesco customer service manager, says: “I’m very sorry that you found a piece of plastic in your Tesco ice cream. I know how concerning this must have been for you.

“During storage we cover the ingredients used in our products with plastic. I’m concerned that this ended up in the product because our supplier should remove all plastic before the ingredients are added.

“I have told our supplier and they will carry out their own investigation. I can assure you that they will do everything they can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

He then offers her a £10 money card to be spent at Tesco stores.

When contacted by the Telegraph & Argus, a Tesco spokesman said: “All of our suppliers carry out stringent safety checks on every single product. We are carrying out a thorough investigation with the supplier but have yet to discover how this plastic could have got into the ice cream.”

A West Yorkshire Trading Standards spokesman said six weeks did “seem a little long to be kept in the dark” before getting the letter back from Tesco.

He said: “It would have been better if the mother had been told sooner or at least been updated about what Tesco and the supplier were doing about the problem.

“As for the £10 offered, by law all the family are entitled to is a refund of the cost of the ice cream and payment of any costs associated with taking the product back to the store. If the child had been injured, then they would have to seek more advice.”