This Poisonous Beetle Is Not A Crunchy Salad Topping

This photo has been censored for your protection. The real photos are at the end of this post. Don’t scroll down if you’re eating salad, maybe.[/caption]Small animals love vegetables, and so do people. Sometimes small animals end up harvested along with vegetables, slip through safeguards in the system, and end up in our bowls. Usually, these are harmless, but what if they aren’t? Four people in different places have found potentially poisonous beetles in their salad greens, and we really, really hope that there aren’t more out there lurking in more salads.

All four of these critters were reported to the ever-useful r/whatsthisbug subreddit, where users correctly identified the salad beetles as Tegrodera aloga, the Iron Cross blister beetle. (A real-life entomologist confirmed this identification.) All four were in organic lettuce, spinach, or packaged salads. Two reports were in Illinois, one in Virginia, and one in Ohio. None of those are areas where the Iron Cross blister beetle normally hangs out: while different species of blister beetles are scattered all over the world, this species is supposed to live in the American Southwest and Mexico. Not in Ohio. Not in salad containers.

Here’s the problem with these beetles hanging out in food: when stressed, they give off a substance called cantharidin, which is poisonous. While eating one beetle won’t kill a human adult, it will definitely cause pain and suffering. Eating insects that give off cantharidin or plants that these insects have contaminated has been known to kill farm animals, and toddlers have been documented eating cousins to these beetles and becoming critically ill as a result.

If you’ve spotted one of these beetles in your salad, let us know. More importantly, let the company that packaged the product and the Food and Drug Administration know. Call them to file a complaint. Even if they can’t do anything in your individual case, reporting incidents like this to the government helps them to notice patterns and investigate them.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist