Croydon family say they found maggots in Aldi beef

A CROYDON family captured footage of maggots in their Aldi-bought beef days after the supermarket chain said critters found in chicken was an isolated incident.

A CROYDON family captured footage of maggots in their Aldi-bought beef days after the supermarket chain said critters in chicken was an isolated incident.

Jayne said she bought the vacuum sealed butterflied beef at Aldi Croydon on Saturday, still with two weeks before its use by date — February 25 — and cooked the meat on Sunday.

“Our 18-year-old looked at it and said, ‘There’s something wriggling on my food’,” she said.

“Sure enough, we looked and they seemed to be crawling out of the cracks (in the meat).

A screenshot of the offending beef. Picture: Supplied

“I’d already had two mouthfuls. Mine was cooked a bit better — they were still there but cooked.”

Jayne wrote a post about it on Facebook, where a friend shared a link with her about a Tooradin family that claimed to find maggots in chicken tenders just six days before her own incident.

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“I’ve never had anything like this before,” she said.

The butterflied beef packet with use by date of February 25, 2017. Picture: Supplied

“It was in the fridge within half an hour (after purchase). The next day I literally cut it open and put it on the barbecue.

“Something would have had to be in there, it’s not like it was sitting out on the bench for hours.”

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Despite an email complaint from Jayne, she did not hear back from Aldi until the Herald Sun made an inquiry about her experience.

“They called me and said, ‘We’ll investigate’,” Jayne said.

“She said, ‘You can just throw the product out and I’ll tell the store you’ll be in for a refund’.

“But I don’t think that’s suitable.

“Why isn’t there a product recall?

“How would this just be one piece of meat, how is that possible?”

An Aldi spokeswoman said it was an “isolated issue, with no other complaints received”.

The company said the video shared by the customer had been examined by Skye Blackburn, an independent Entomologist and Food Scientist, who believed it was extremely unlikely that the contamination occurred during the manufacturing or distribution process.

“It is most likely that the eggs had been laid after this meat had been cooked, and the heat of the meat has accelerated the hatching of the eggs,” Ms Blackburn added.

“Heat allows eggs the potential to hatch within minutes of being laid. Due to higher than average temperatures we’re experiencing at the moment, it is common for the life cycle of insects to occur more quickly.”

Jayne said the response made her “really angry”.

“Maggots don’t develop in a few minutes,” she said.

On Monday, Bill Johnson from Tooradin told radio 3AW his daughter found 3mm long maggots in Aldi-bought chicken tenders on January 30.

“She wasn’t physically sick but she was pretty disgusted as you can imagine,” he told Neil Mitchell.