Airline responds after woman finds maggots in her in-flight meal

                    Maggot found in airline meal         (C)StellavanHeerden

 Air Mauritius says "food safety is a key element of its offering and it ensures all its caterers respect the national and international standards", following an incident in which Pretoria resident Stella van Heerden found maggots in her food.
Van Heerden and her family were on board the 09:15am Air Mauritius flight MK851 headed for OR Tambo on Thursday morning when she made the nauseating discovery.   Carla da Silva, Air Mauritius Regional Manager told Traveller24, "We take this complaint very seriously as food safety on board is a critical element of our product and is a highly regulated area."
Da Silva said the airline regrets the inconvenience caused and would like to "apologise profusely for the experience as we strive for service excellence".
Van Heerden was shocked to find the maggots, halfway through eating her meal. 
“I believe they came from the mushrooms, I looked down, asking myself, 'What is this?' "I took a photo with my iPad and enlarged it. That's when I saw it was a maggot and said 'no this can’t be?'. "Maggots!?”
After bringing it to the flight attendants attention, Van Heerden said he explained it might be some “kind of spice”.  “He tried to cut it in front of me and then agreed that it definitely was not a spice. It was a maggot!

                                                                          (C)StellavanHeerden

According to Da Silva Air Mauritius conducted an investigation into the incident and said the findings show "the origin of the insect larva is not from any of the meal components. For example the sliced mushroom, grilled tomato, potato rosti or the omelette as this type of larva is not seen or reported in mushroom, potato rosti or tomato."
"We use international caterers worldwide and the selection is done after a rigorous selection process which include their food safety systems. All received vegetables undergo strict quality checks which are conducted by the receiving staff, quality assurance team as well as the Chef on duty," said Da Silva.
Da Silva said corrective action would be taken and further assessments on the receiving, pre-preparation, hot kitchen and meal portioning areas would be done to "ensure and exercise more vigilance".
In response to the apology, Van Heerden told Traveller24 that it was not satisfactory.
"One can clearly see that they do not want to take responsibility and their reply seems like a standard copy and paste."
According to Van Heerden, when the airline contacted her following the Traveller24 report, she said she did not feel remorse from their side, instead she felt like she was being accused of contacting the media before contacting the airline directly.
Van Heerden confirm that she had completed the complaint form during that flight as well as emailed the airline on 1 October after arriving back home.
"We do not want to gain anything from this. We merely want to solve this issue so that other passengers don't have to experience the same."

Source: News24