On Saturday morning, March 4 it came to our attention that a patient at the Cayman Islands Hospital found an insect in the porridge served at breakfast. Management was informed and responded immediately by recalling the porridge across the hospital units and informing the Department of Environmental Health (DEH), the regulatory agency for food service in the country.

An Environmental Health Officer responded immediately and has taken the specimen away to confirm, but the initial assessment is that it appears to be limited to a single box of Cream of Wheat in a case that was delivered from a local vendor last week; the case has an expiry date of December 20, 2017.  The investigation confirmed the presence of what appears to be the larva of a weevil in two of forty-eight portions of the porridge. No evidence of infestation was found in the kitchen or any of the adjacent areas or storage.

The Officer has stated that “inspection of the contaminated meal revealed that there were two of what appeared to be a weevil larva” and that “generally, most cereal contains insect eggs when harvested from the field and in rare situations, these eggs can hatch in sealed boxes or packages of cereal”.  He concluded that “there was no evidence of maggots in the sample or in any part of the kitchen at the hospital”. DEH will issue a final report to the Medical Officer of Health on Monday, March 6.

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