SINGAPORE: Hypermart chain Giant apologised on Monday (Feb 12) after a video showing maggots in several trays of eggs displayed at Giant Hypermarket Tampines was circulated online.

The video, which was posted on Facebook on Sunday, shows maggots crawling across the eggs and some fly eggs inside the packaging.





In response to Channel NewsAsia's queries, a spokesperson for Giant clarified that there were no complaints about maggots from customers at Giant Tampines, but some staff members spotted them the following morning.

"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 spokesperson, noting that it was a member of the store operations team that had discovered the affected eggs during their early morning routine store pre-opening check on Monday.



According to Giant, an "immediate check" was also conducted on the same batch of egg trays across all Giant stores and there were no reports of similar incidents elsewhere.





The retailer said that the other eggs found in the same batch were "safe for consumption", following an investigation by the eggs' supplier.

"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 (the eggs) are safe for consumption," said the spokesperson for Giant.



The spokesperson added that a broken egg could have caused the infestation.

As one of the eggs inside the affected egg tray was found to be broken, probably during delivery, "this could have attracted a fly which then laid eggs inside the tray causing the presence of maggots", said the spokesperson.

Giant added that additional precautions will be added to tighten the existing fly prevention programme by the supplier to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents.

The Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore has said it is investigating the incident.

