Giant lodges report with supplier over
worms seen in egg trays at Tampines
Hypermarket
SINGAPORE - Supermarket chain Giant has conducted an
investigation after a video showing worms in trays of eggs at its
Tampines Hypermarket went viral.
The video was posted by Mr Leonard Tang on Facebook at 8.04pm on
Sunday (Feb 11). It has since drawn more than 162,000 views and
almost 6,000 shares.
A sign attached to the egg stand indicates that they are "Giant
Farm Fresh Eggs" and go for $4.45 per tray of 25 eggs.
Mr Tang, 36, told The Straits Times on Monday that he was at the
hypermarket between 6pm and 7pm on Sunday.
"There were about four or five trays with the worms," he claimed.
"I wanted to buy the eggs. When I removed the first tray to look at
it, I realised the second and third trays were crawling with
worms."
Mr Tang, who is self-employed, said he did not tell the staff at
Giant as he had to look after his four children, who were running
around.
"This is the first time I've seen this," he said. "I go there about
once a month and spend a few hundred bucks each time."
A spokesman for Giant told ST that Giant Tampines did not receive
any complaint from customers about any maggots being found in the
egg tray at the hypermarket.
Instead, its store operations team discovered the affected egg tray
during their early morning routine store pre-opening check on
Monday.
"The affected tray of eggs together with six other non-affected
trays around it were immediately removed and discarded and the area
cleaned and sanitised," said the spokesman.
At the same time, Giant conducted an immediate check on the other
egg trays in the same batch across all its stores.
"There are no other reports of similar incidents and no complaints
received from customers," said the spokesman.
"A report was also lodged with the supplier and their investigation
into samples of the same batch of eggs did not reveal any
abnormalities or issues and are safe for consumption."
The Giant spokesman said that one possible reason for the
appearance of worms was that one of the eggs inside the affected
egg tray was broken, probably during the delivery process.
"This could have attracted a fly which then laid eggs inside the
tray, causing the presence of maggots," she said.
The supermarket chain apologised sincerely for the "unfortunate
incident" and reassured customers that "there are stringent quality
assurance and food safety measures in place to ensure the health
and wellbeing of our customers".
"Additional precautions will be added to tighten the existing fly
prevention programme by the supplier to prevent recurrence of
similar incidents," said the spokesman.
ST has contacted the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of
Singapore for comments.
-- ST