The Seattle Times got to the bottom of this story very quickly. Just this morning the Times posted a story about a woman who found a razorblade in a muffin purchased at the Mountlake Terrace QFC. It ends up that a long time employee of the bakery where the muffins came from, Mostly Muffins (in Kent), dropped the razorblade on Sunday in to a giant mizing bowl and was afraid to tell his manager. The employee has been suspended.

The owner of a local bakery said today that a razor blade found in a muffin bought at a QFC store in Mountlake Terrace got there by accident when one of her workers dropped the blade in a vat of batter.

Molly Wilmot, owner of Mostly Muffins, said a longtime employee was using the blade last Sunday to open bags and boxes when it fell into a giant mixing bowl. He lost it in the batter and was afraid to tell his manager. The employee has been suspended until the company completes an internal investigation, and all Mostly Muffins products have been removed from QFC stores until the bakery completes an independent audit of its facilities.

“I am mortified — mortified,” Wilmot said. “I’m just glad nobody got hurt.”

The incident came to light Thursday after Mountlake Terrace resident and Seattle Times administrative assistant Jill Hutchison, 48, broke apart an almond-poppyseed muffin she bought at the grocery store and found a lump baked into it. When it turned out to be a razor blade, Hutchison returned the four-pack of muffins to the store. Quality-control staff at QFC, which is owned by Cincinnati-based Kroger, traced the prepackaged muffins to Mostly Muffins, a Kent-based bakery that got its start 23 years ago in a church basement on Capitol Hill.

Wilmot said she confronted her staff and asked how such a thing could have happened and a baker who had been with the company for five years immediately stepped forward and said he was responsible.

“I can say with absolute certainty that this was not a tampering issue,” she said. Wilmot said the employee was genuinely sorry and upset by his own actions.

Mostly Muffins requires its workers to use only approved box cutters to open packages, “but for some reason he brought in his own razor blade.” That the razor blade actually worked its way into one of her products is the result, she said, of “the perfect storm.”

…

Kristin Maas, spokeswoman for QFC, wouldn’t comment on Wilmot’s explanation because the incident is still under an internal investigation. She said the company has “locked down” the bar codes on all Mostly Muffins goods at QFC stores around the region so customers who find a stray package they missed won’t be able to purchase it.

Read the rest at the Seattle Times.

You are now safe to eat muffins again.