Instead of enjoying a late night snack, Rachel Ng was in for a shock when she opened her new box of Post’s Great Grains Banana Nut Crunch cereal and the sealed plastic package containing the food within and discovered a worm crawling from the package onto the top of the box.
When Ng took a closer look, she found that there were several live mealworms wriggling in the packet which she had purchased from a neighbourhood convenience store in Bukit Batok.
Besides the critters, Ng also discovered white mould growing on the cereal which was only due to expire in February 2018:
Curiously, when Ng returned to the convenience store to report the mealworms, the shopkeeper reportedly told her that the presence of such mealworms in food products is “normal.”
He, however, offered Ng a refund and assured her that he would file a complaint to the distributor of the cereal.
When contacted, local distributor Auric Pacific Marketing told reporters that they believe this is an isolated incident:
“We believe this could be an isolated incident but we will conduct a random check at store and in our warehouse.”
Offering Ng a $20 NTUC voucher to replace her cereal box, a representative of Auric’s representative said that the company will collect the worm-infested cereal box for further investigation.
The representative added that they cannot respond to queries about quality control.