Couple find worms in box of cereal

Couple find worms in box of cereal

Worms in the spoon

Slimy pink worms found in packet that had been bought from a mall in Madiwala

​It was a lazy Sunday morning for Thirukumaran Nagarajan and his wife in their Bommanahalli home. The 30-year-old entrepreneur and IIM graduate woke up late and decided open the new Kellogg's Extra Muesli Crunchy Fruit and Nut that he'd bought two days ago. At around 11:30 am, Thirukumaran's wife served a bowlful of the cereal with warm milk to her husband. However, she shrieked just as he was about to have his first spoonful and told him to stop. 

"We were horrified to find slimy, pink worms in the muesli. It wasn't just one or two -- there were several. Both of us gagged and I ran to check if the milk had gone bad. But it wasn't the milk, so I emptied the contents of the Kellogg's box into a big vessel and began searching for worms," recalled Thirukumaran. 

Though he couldn't spot the worms immediately, Thirukumaran decided to pour hot water into the vessel. As soon as he did so, the wriggling larvae floated to the top, he says. "I was surprised to see that the manufacturing date showed September 12, 2014; and the expiry date was nine months from then. I had bought the box from a mall in Madiwala on Friday, and am now wondering if the rest of the boxes in this batch may also contain worms," the victim said. 

The couple said they were regular consumers of Kellogg's range of breakfast cereals, but this incident has worried them considerably. "Such incidents cannot be ignored, and we want people to know what happened. Big brands have a responsibility towards consumers, and they most certainly cannot take us for granted," Thirukumaran said. 

Revolted by low standards of food processing, he will be shooting off an email to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in Chennai, which handles queries and complaints from the southern region of the country. "I have also posted a picture and complaint on the official Kellogg's Chocos India page on Facebook ," he added. 

When BM contacted Kellogg's, they said the consumer had not officially contacted their consumer cell, but they had replied to his FB post asking him to share his contact details. They "regard every consumer query or complaint with utmost importance and look forward to receiving the sample at the earliest". As a responsible organisation, they "address such complaints irrespective of whether they originated in the supply chain or homes."