Aug. 06, 2009 03:09AM EDT

For workers at a garbage plant in Seneca, N.Y., it was probably the last thing they expected to see coming down the conveyor belt - a severed human foot, one that just might be Canadian.

But just before 9 o'clock on Monday night, a worker at Casella Recycling, a transfer station located in Stanley, a hamlet in the town of Seneca, spotted the foot, unshod and severed just above the right ankle. The company called 911 and police are investigating.

"We're trying to determine what exactly we have here," said Philip Povero, sheriff of Ontario County in New York.

One possibility is that the foot arrived in Stanley from Canada. Mr. Povero said the foot was likely dropped off between July 29 and Aug. 3.

About 136 garbage trucks unloaded at Casella's facility during that time, with the "vast majority" of garbage originating within about 15 counties in New York state.

But some of the rubbish also has a distinctly Canadian flavour, and Mr. Povero is "looking at a couple of haulers that came out of Toronto."

He emphasized that there's no reason to believe yet that the foot is from Canada but police in Toronto have started their own investigation.

"At the end of the day, the objective is to determine who that foot belongs to," said Toronto police spokesman Tony Vella. "From there, we can find out the circumstances around that person's death."

Stanley doesn't normally get much Toronto trash, but during the past two weeks several tonnes of GTA rubbish have been dumped at the Casella facility, according to vice-president Joseph Fusco.

A likely explanation is the recent municipal strike, he said.

Mr. Fusco said the only Canadian company using the Stanley transfer station recently has been Turtle Island Recycling. The Toronto-based waste removal company has been depositing garbage collected from Toronto's blue bin program, he said.

The owner of Turtle Island did not reply to requests for interviews yesterday, but city of Toronto spokesman Kevin Sack confirmed that Turtle Island collects blue bin garbage in Etobicoke, where garbage collection continued throughout the strike. Blue bins in private condos and businesses in Toronto were also cleared during the strike, but not necessarily by Turtle Island.

The severed foot is currently being tested by a medical examiner in Rochester.Yesterday, there was speculation the foot was medical waste ; Toronto police Staff Sergeant David Vickers told reporters that medical waste had been found in the same garbage pile.

But for Rob Jacome, it's highly unlikely the foot originated from a Toronto hospital. Mr. Jacome is vice-president of Stericycle Canada, which disposes of medical waste for all the major hospitals in Toronto.

He said body parts are placed in special red bags. The law also requires that red bag material be incinerated. Stericycle uses its own incinerator in Brampton.