Three bites into a sushi roll she had just bought and her stomach lurched to her throat.
Chloe McSaveney, 22, was staring at two halves of a maggot crawling across the crispy chicken filling, centimetres from her lips.
“I looked and saw two things wiggling around … I spat out what I had in my mouth,” she says.
At a table at Maribyrnong’s Highpoint shopping centre during a busy lunch hour last month, the university student started to splutter and panic.
When her boyfriend demanded an explanation from the shop, Sushi Sushi, staff threw the roll in the bin, and offered a refund, Ms McSaveney said.
Highpoint centre staff rushed her to the medical clinic upstairs and retrieved the infested sushi roll. It was whisked away by Maribyrnong Council health inspectors for analysis in a laboratory.
Two weeks later, the results were in – fly larvae. Maggots.
“The laboratory found a single live maggot in the sample provided,” said the council’s environmental health officer, Jonathan Brett.
“The presence of a maggot is unlikely to cause physical harm.”
Ms McSaveney said she was still reeling from emotional impact.
“The mental side of things is still affecting me now. I’m having trouble eating – I’m only eating about half of what I normally eat, and I’m struggling to be confident my food isn’t ridden with maggots.”
Ms McSaveney said she did not want the issue to be “brushed aside” and forgotten.
In a statement released on Friday Sushi Sushi general manager Paul Grixti said that in 15 years of trading they had served over 2 million portions of sushi every week through their network of 91 stores, and this was the first food safety incident they had ever had.
“Immediately after we were told of the incident, we ordered a total recall of all food products from the store concerned both cooked and uncooked,” Mr Grixti said.
“We fully understand Ms McSaveney’s concerns and we would like to stress our concern for the trauma this incident has caused.
“Even though the council’s environmental health officer has confirmed that the presence of one single maggot is highly unlikely to cause any physical harm, we are determined to take whatever steps we must to ensure this cannot happen again and customers can continue to have confidence in the safety of all our products.”
