Fears over tuna from major supermarket – after customer discovers tin laced with MAGGOTS

A mother has vowed to never eat tuna again after claiming to discover over a hundred maggots in a tin from a major supermarket.

Bethany Bryson, 28, from Edinburgh in Scotland, found the maggots just before she was about to feed her son the tuna for lunch.

The mother-of-one had bought the multipack of John West tinned tuna for £3.98 from Asda’s Edinburgh Supercentre store on May 23.

When she returned home, she put her one-year-old son Hudson Gray down for a nap while she unpacked her shopping. 

She had intended on making her one year-old son a tuna and sweetcorn baguette for lunch—but her plans were quickly thrown out the window.

Despite not noticing anything unusual about the cans in the store, when she went to take the top tin off she made a disgusting discovery.

Ms Bryson said: ‘This is going to sound like I’m exaggerating but maggots literally flew at me. 

‘I was in shock and disbelief. 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.’

The mother estimated there were more than 100 maggots crawling inside the tuna—as seen in stomach-churning footage. 

Manufacturer, John West Foods, who have apologised and offered her a £10 voucher, suggested the can had been damaged in transit prior to arriving to the supermarket.

The experience traumatised Ms Bryson so much—she has vowed to never eat tuna again.

‘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 said. 

‘The smell was something unholy. That was something else.

‘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.’

The mother, who works in customer service at another supermarket, also contacted Asda’s customer service team. 

She also called up the Asda’s Edinburgh Supercentre store to tell them about what had happened.

Ms Bryson said the staff told her to bring the tuna tins into the store for testing and that they would remove the tins from the shelves.

Armed with two pairs of disposable gloves, she had to fish through her bins to retrieve the tin. 

‘I had to bin raid to get the tins out. Luckily I have disposable gloves, I had two layers of them on. Two Ziploc bags and a nappy bag went into containing those tins,’ she said.

The manager offered her a £20 voucher as a gesture of goodwill when she returned to the store, she said.

While Asda’s head office apologised for her experience and offered her a £5 voucher, she said their response was unacceptable.

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.’

A John West 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.

‘We are deeply sorry for the distress caused to the customer who purchased this product. We sincerely apologise for her experience and fully understand the concern and upset this has caused her and her family.’