Baby food recalled due to moth larvae

Baby food maker Cow & Gate has recalled 19,000 packs of Sunny Start – My First Banana Muesli after receiving 19 complaints over moth larvae.

The company has started an investigation at its factory in Austria to find out what had gone wrong, according to a spokeswoman at Cow & Gate.

‘Very sorry’ for recall

“We are very sorry that this has happened,” she told FoodManufacture.co.uk.

“We would like to invite anybody who has an affected pack to get in touch with us and we can organise a refund, or they can take back to the store where they purchased it.”

Last month customer Louise Price found larvae in her son’s muesli and posted photographs on the Cow & Gate Facebook page.

“This morning I had opened it to give him some for breakfast and we had came across maggots or some kind of living creature in our packet!” she said. 

“Please, please, please double check these things before you give them to your child.” 

Separate complaints about Cow & Gate products, made via Twitter, included a cobweb and maggot in muesli, “something black” in powdered milk and an insect in porridge. See Tweets below. 

The Cow & Gate spokeswoman said: “Complaints about foreign matter in food products are not unusual but in our experience in a majority of cases, our investigations show they are not of factory origin.

‘Problem with one batch’

“But in the recall case, we have recognised there is a problem with this one batch.”  

Retail chain Spar has also announced the recall of its ready-to-eat Chicken Bites Snack Bags after mould was found in the food product.

The Food Standards Agency warned that some species of mould produce chemicals, known as mycotoxins, which can cause adverse health effects in humans.

Meanwhile, SuperValue has recalled its natural and strawberry yogurts with granola and Glenisk recalled natural and honey organic yogurts with granola.

The products, distributed in Northern Ireland, were recalled because the presence of nuts was not mentioned on the packaging.