Mum finds ‘more than 100 maggots’ in tin of tuna she bought for toddler’s lunch

A mum was horrified to discover ‘more than a 100 maggots’ in a tin of tuna she bought for her toddler’s lunch.

Bethany Bryson picked up a John West multi-pack for £3.98 at Asda’s Edinburgh Supercentre store on May 23.

When she arrived home she put her one-year-old son, Hudson Gray, down for a nap and went to make him a tuna and sweetcorn baguette for lunch.

But, she said, as she took the top tin from the multi-pack stack, three maggots ‘flew’ at her.

She then looked down to see what she believes was another 100 or so maggots in the tin.

‘I was in shock and disbelief,’ she recalled. ‘You know when your skin starts to crawl?

‘I hadn’t even opened the actual tin itself. The tin was open with all those maggots floating about.

‘I was sick. I didn’t eat that whole day. I’m never going to touch tuna again. I wanted to jump in a shower with bleach because I felt disgusting.’

She described the smell as ‘unholy’, adding: ‘Tuna doesn’t smell nice at the best of times but this didn’t even smell like off fish or anything like that. I didn’t know what it smelled like. It was potent. It was disgusting.’

Bethany contacted the Asda store she bought the pack from, where staff said they would remove any remaining tins from their shelves and asked her to bring in her tins for testing.

After donning two pairs of disposable gloves, she fished through her outside bins to retrieve the tins and put them in two Ziploc bags and a nappy bag.

Bethany returned the tins to the store and was offered a £20 voucher as a gesture of goodwill.

She had also phoned Asda’s customer service team who passed the complaint onto head office.

They later apologised for the experience and offered her a £5 voucher.

But she said: ‘I was heated when I got that response and I replied back saying, “£5 when I was about to feed this to my one-year-old son, that’s not acceptable.”

‘I was like, “I do not want my little boy getting sick from that” because he obviously roams about the floor.

‘He’s walking but he does crawl about the kitchen sometimes so the last thing I want is remnants of maggots being on the floor for him to get unwell.

‘I was actually horrified because if those maggots hadn’t been fully developed into the size they were and I hadn’t noticed they were in the tin I could have fed that to my son and that just makes me feel sick, it’s horrible.’

John West have also apologised and offered her a £10 voucher as a gesture of goodwill.

A spokesperson said: ‘At John West, the safety of our consumers and the quality of our products are our highest priorities and we take this incident extremely seriously.

‘No living animal could have survived the high-temperature sterilisation used in our production process.

‘Based on the information currently available, it appears the can was damaged after packaging and during transit within the supply chain.

‘This damage compromised the seal and allowed environmental contamination, ultimately leading to spoilage.

‘While this appears to be an isolated incident, John West is working closely with logistics partners to ensure that product is being handled with care and that such an issue does not occur again.’

An Asda spokesperson said that as soon the store became aware of the issue they removed all products with the same batch code from their shelves.

They added said: ‘This product was supplied by a branded partner who have confirmed it was damaged in transit through the supply chain.’

The spokesperson said they had not received any similar complaints from other customers.

Last year a woman said she was left ‘traumatised’ after finding a dismembered rat wedged in her bread.

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