Chocolate bar 'full of worms'
2005-10-07 08:47
Pretoria - "I was absolutely sick when I realised I had eaten a mouthful of worms instead of the promised healthy cereal that was supposed to have been in the chocolate bar.
"It was a most traumatic experience."
These were the words of Ryan Small of Garsfontein in Pretoria on Thursday after he had taken a bite out of a Notta health bar and then found it was infested by hordes of small yellow worms.
Notta is a product of Bakers, part of National Brands Limited (NBL).
Small bought the health bar at his workplace and did not, for one moment, think that it could be crawling with small worms.
He had already taken a bite before a colleague drew his attention to the worms.
Small immediately dialled NBL's client service line and heard that the company was well aware of the problem.
"I just can't understand why they did not issue a public warning to prevent people from falling into the same trap that I did."
Madeleine Simon, NBL's communication manager, said in a statement the company was in the process of withdrawing all Notta bars older than 13 weeks from the shelves to subject them to extensive tests.
"Notta is rich in natural ingredients such as wheat, rice and oats and because of that prone to infestation by natural enemies and parasites.
"We did find that the sealing of the bar could pose a possible problem in instances where the packing machinery was not performing up to standard and the bar then became infested in the shops.
"Our factory is already attending to the problem," she said.
Small said he was not likely to buy another of these bars in future.
He would make sure that the product was kosher before putting his teeth into it.