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