'I thought I'd bitten chunk of cinnamon in my Meal Deal - then it wriggled'
A Post Office manager claimed he was left unable to eat for four days after he found a cockroach wriggling around his mouth after he bit into a Tesco meal deal sandwich.
Adil Vasaya, 41, from Bolton, Greater Manchester, bought a chicken tikka sandwich, a pack of Walkers Max Flame Grilled crisps, and a bottle of Mountain Dew as part of a meal deal from Tesco's Preston Superstore earlier this month on Saturday, July 5. However, when the Chorley Post Office manager bit into the sandwich he says he felt the wiggling legs of a live cockroach crawling around in his mouth.
Adil said: 'When I felt it in my mouth and I pulled it out, I thought it was a piece of cinnamon, because it's a tikka one I thought it might be a bit of spice or cinnamon. As I put it down I saw legs come out and it started moving, it just freaked me out.'
Adil says he then ran upstairs and spat his sandwich into the toilet before driving back to Tesco with his wife to return the rest of the soiled product. There, he was refunded just £1.76 – the cost of the sandwich minus the meal deal discount, and had two Clubcard points deducted from his card's balance.
Tesco says it is conducting a 'full investigation', but has still not identified the source of the insect, and that no issues have been reported in its supply chain. Adil said: 'For the first four days after, I couldn't even eat – I couldn't even face putting anything in my mouth.
'It literally traumatised me that much, for the first four days I just didn't feel like eating at all.' Adil says he's heard nothing from Tesco since returning the sandwich to the store.
He added: 'I'd like an investigation to be put forward to find out how this actually happened.' A Tesco spokesperson said: 'We're sorry to hear about this.
"We work closely with our suppliers to ensure there are robust quality procedures in place, and sandwiches are thoroughly checked throughout the production process.
'In a situation like this, we always ask that the customer returns the product to store for a full refund and so our team can fully investigate the potential cause.'
In a similar case, a couple who bought a rotisserie chicken from Costco in Vauxhall, Liverpool, earlier this month were left disgusted when they spotted maggots hatching inside the bag. Liam Jamieson bought the ready-to-eat chicken, but says when his partner went to prepare the meat for dinner, she noticed a white, lumpy substance inside the sealed packet.
Liam initially brushed it off, thinking it was "just fat", then his partner used her phone to zoom in and take a picture and the grim reality became clear - maggots were hatching from larvae inside the bag. Liam said he phoned the store immediately, and claims he was told to put the chicken into the freezer, returning the product whenever it was convenient for him to do so.
Instead, Liam said he put the chicken in a carrier bag and left it out of the way, intending to return it as soon as the store opened the next morning. But he then made a further grim discovery when he looked inside the package to find larvae had hatched with flies "crawling all over the place."
Liam said he returned the product to the store and was assured an investigation would be carried out. He said he was also given a £20 Costco voucher.
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