The Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar has an expiry date of 26 October 2022.
A TikTok video showing a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate infested with worms has gone viral on TikTok, and is now being shared extensively on other social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
In the video, one hears a man speaking in Tamil, asking people not to give this chocolate bar to their children without first tearing it open and inspecting it. He said that he was shocked to find the worms in a Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar and that he made the video to make people aware about these chocolates.
In the video, he points out that expiry date on the chocolate bar is 26 October 2022.
It is unclear where the video was taken. But the controversy about worms in Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolates has surfaced every so often since 2003.
Back in 2003, a month before Deepavali, customers in Mumbai, India, complained about finding worms in Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolates. The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration responded quickly and seized the ones made at Cadbury’s plant in Pune.
Cadbury soon issued a statement saying that the infestation could not have happened at the manufacturing stage and poor storage at the retailers was the most likely cause.
But the FDA would have none of that. It asked: “It was presumed that worms got into it at the storage level, but then what about the packing – packaging was not proper or airtight, either ways it’s a manufacturing defect with unhygienic conditions or improper packaging.”
Allegations and counter-allegations followed and the heat of negative publicity melted Cadbury’s sales by 30 per cent, at a time when it usually sees a festive spike of 15 per cent. In the wake of the controversy, Cadbury halted on-air advertising in India for the very first time, and stayed off for a month and a half after Deepavali. Consumers seemed to ignore their chocolate cravings.
Once Cadbury realised it was a brand under fire and, in October of 2003, launched project Vishwa’s, an education initiative covering 190,000 retailers in key states. But what the company did in January 2004 is what really helped de-worm the brand.
It invested more than SS2.7 million in imported machinery, and revamped the packaging process which upped costs by 10 to 15 per cent, but didn’t hike prices.
Cadbury’s India said at that time, “While we’re talking about a few bars of the 30 million we sell every month – we believe that to be a responsible company, consumers need to have complete faith in products. So even if it calls for substantial investment and change, one must not let the consumers’ confidence erode.”
It also roped in Amitabh Bachchan as brand ambassadorto do some heavy-duty endorsement. But even that did not put the iissue to bed for good.
In 2017, a contributor to a site called Linus Tech Tips raised the worm issue again. A commenter responded: “A company that sells chocolate bars with worms shouldn’t be kept running, what if an unknowing kid ate that, Cadbury is ridiculous”.
Then in 2021, a woman in Sydney vowed never to eat chocolate again after biting into a Cadbury bar and finding dozens of wriggling maggots in it. The woman said that she and a friend were watching a movie in her lounge with the lights switched off when she noticed something moving below her nose.
They had bought a 12-pack of Cadbury’s Milky Top Freddo bars – half white chocolate and half milk chocolate frog-shaped bars – from a local store.
When the white chocolate part was, for a second, illuminated by the light from the TV screen, she saw “this thing moving”. She was horrified because at she had already eaten half the chocolate, and believed she must have swallowed at least one maggot.
When they looked more closely, they found maggots inside the wrapper and the woman said the block was covered in a fine layer of “little babies and eggs and stuff”. It happened late in April last year, she said, but frustrated by Cadbury’s response, they shared the photos online in May.
She said that when they complained to Cadbury, they were offered them a A$25 voucher. She said, “We’re not asking for a free chocolate, we want an explanation. They (Cadbury) were so rude about the whole thing. I wanted an explanation so I could eat chocolate again, like telling us it was one in a million.”
Responding to news reports, Cadbury apologised to the customers affected by the worm infested chocolates. It said:
“We’re sorry to hear about (the women’s) experience. Our dedicated teams work hard to ensure our products are in the best possible condition when they’re enjoyed by our consumers. Based on the pictures, it looks like Warehouse or Indian Meal Moths have entered the product in storage.
“These bugs are common around the world and can gain access to a range of different food products including dried fruit, nuts, pasta, and bread without visibly damaging the packaging.
“We put in place a range of measures at our distribution centres to minimise the risk of these common bugs entering our packaging, and work closely with stores and transport companies to help them maintain an environment that minimises the risk. However, on this occasion, it looks like the product has been affected in transit or storage.”
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