Mother ‘horrified’ after finding box of Lidl eggs writhing with MAGGOTS despite being in date

A horrified mum claims her newly-bought Lidl eggs were so rotten they infested her entire shopping and fridge with ‘hundreds of writhing maggots’.

Alice Evans, from Maindstone, Kent, has shared horrifying footage of the maggots squirming inside the black, rotten egg, which she had planned to feed to her two-year-old daughter. 

The 25-year-old was forced to throw away her entire £60 food shop over fears the maggots contaminated the rest of her shopping.

The maggots had also spread through the rest of the egg carton, meaning Alice had to throw away all six of the eggs and the rest of her food shop

Alice (pictured) called the maggots a ‘health hazard’ and was not happy with the £12 compensation offered

Alice said she was hit with a stench similar to ‘rotting fish’ coming from her fridge after coming home, and despite being the eggs being within date, one had cracked open revealing rotted black insides crawling with maggots.

Lidl said they were sorry their ‘high standards were not met on this occasion’ and confirmed they had given the customer a replacement item and further gesture of goodwill.

Alice said: ‘My partner had unpacked the shopping and just put it away.

‘I opened my fridge and could smell something funny like rotting fish, so I emptied it out completely and cleaned it because I thought it might have been the fridge smelling.

‘As I went to pack it all away I opened the eggs to put them in the egg compartment in the fridge and I just saw these maggots crawling everywhere.

‘I was just completely horrified. It was absolutely disgusting. It’s a health hazard.

‘Then looking back in the shopping bag there were maggots in the bottom of there as well.

‘So I’ve then had to chuck away all my food that was in that shopping bag because I’m not having that anywhere near my food especially when I’ve got two young children.

‘What if the shell hadn’t cracked and I’d cooked this egg and given it to my daughter – I dread to think what could have happened. That would have been awful.’

The Lidl branch in Farleigh Hill, Maidstone, Kent, where Alice bought the eggs, offered her only £12 in compensation, saying they cannot refund her entire shop without ‘proof’ of there being maggots in the food bag.

She then complained via customer services but says this met a dead end as they asked for a photo of the barcode on the egg box, which she no longer had after handing it into the store.

Alice said: ‘The manager said “it could happen in any shop really, it’s one of those things. You can get a fly in the produce and it can produce maggots”.

‘He apologised for it and offered me another free box of eggs. I didn’t take it, I said no I wasn’t very happy with that.

‘I personally don’t think they handled it very well. They definitely need to get things like that under control because it is a serious health issue.

‘I don’t know if they check their eggs before they put them out in the shop but it doesn’t look like they do.

The eggs were well within their ‘best before’ date when Alice purchased them, with the Lidl branch manager saying it was likely a fly was trapped inside and produced the maggots

The mother-of-two said she had planned on feeding the eggs to her two-year-old daughter, and dreads to think what had happened if the egg hadn’t of cracked and she gave it to her toddler

Alice said Lidl needs to be doing more checks to see if there are any maggots inside the cartons

‘That should be something they are doing – checking the eggs when they are putting them on the shelves – check there’s no maggots in there definitely.’

The mum now vows to thoroughly check any eggs herself before feeding them to her young daughter and encourages other customers to do the same after her grisly find.

Alice said: ‘People say check your eggs before you buy them to make sure none of them are cracked but as we don’t eat that many eggs in my house it wouldn’t bother me that much if one was cracked so I never checked them.

‘It’s put me off shopping at Lidl, I won’t be going back there.’

A spokesperson for Lidl said: ‘We were very sorry to hear of this matter, as it is never our intention for a customer to be dissatisfied in any way.

‘We work very closely with our suppliers to ensure that the products we offer are of the highest possible quality for our customers. We were therefore disappointed that our expected high standards were not met on this occasion.

‘We can confirm that upon returning to store the customer was given a replacement item, along with a further gesture of goodwill for any inconvenience caused.’