Plastic, bones and metal were found in chicken tenders served to New York City public school students — jurors heard this week at the bribery trial of a former top Department of Education official.

Eric Goldstein — the former head of the department’s Office of School Support Services — is accused of taking bribes from the owners of a Texas-based meat supplier, Somma Foods, to turn a blind eye to the gross grub.

“Students and staff complained about the food because they found bones and plastic in the chicken tenders,” Brooklyn federal prosecutor Andrew Grubin said in court Wednesday.

“One person choked and had to be rescued.”

Somma owners Brian Twomey, Michael Turley and Blaine Iler — who are on trial alongside Goldstein — were hoping to “make millions of dollars by selling food to the DOE,” Grubin said in his opening remarks.

The owners gave Goldstein seed money to start his own meat-supply business — and in exchange, Goldstein “would make sure that DOE bought Somma products like chicken,” Grubin said.

Twomey, Turley and Iler also bribed Goldstein by sending money to his divorce lawyer and to his father and by taking him on trips to Chile and Poland, the prosecutor claimed.

Goldstein allegedly had the contract with the start-up company “expedited through the DOE’s approval process” and got their food in nearly 2,000 city schools for lunches starting in 2015.

But the company struggled to meet the sudden demand for millions of dollars worth of food “to the largest school district in the country,” Grubin alleged.

Somma’s “food packaging was a mess,” they didn’t have enough food and the food they had “contained foreign objects like plastic and metal,” Grubin said.

In 2016, students and staffers complained about finding bones and plastic in chicken tenders — with one person choking — resulting in the DOE putting the chicken tender orders on hold.

But trio of meat purveyors “were desperate” as Somma was “hanging on by a thread” and allegedly upped their bribes to Goldstein by giving total ownership of their side company, Range Meats, to him, as well as another $66,000, Grubin said.

“The next day, Goldstein gave the green light for Somma’s chicken to be allowed back into New York
City schools,” Grubin told jurors.

“They paid him off,” Grubin said. “They got what they paid for.”

The men are charged with conspiracy to commit extortion and bribery, while Goldstein is also charged with extortion. They each face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Twomey, Turley and Iler’s lawyers each told jurors their clients were innocent and denied they ever paid bribes to Goldstein.

Twomey’s lawyer Tobin Romero told the jury his client wasn’t guilty and that he didn’t pay bribes, but rather made “payments intended to cover business expenses of a company that [he] co-founded and owned.”

Turley’s lawyer Aitan Goelman said jurors won’t “see any” evidence linking a bribe to why Somma’s chicken tenders were fast-tracked into schools.

“Mr. Iler did not intend and he did not pay Mr. Goldstein bribes, period,” Bradley Henry said during his opening statement.

On Thursday afternoon, jurors heard from a DOE employee Meserete Davis who worked for research and development for the schools food program and worked in the same building as Goldstein.

Davis testified that Goldstein expedited Somma’s yogurt parfait so that it could be served to students in 2015 — despite the fact that its prices were “very high” and that the DOE had all the materials it needed to make it in house.

The trial is expected to last for a month.