IN many food establishments in Trinidad and Tobago it is not uncommon to see flies happily buzzing around in glass display cases and rubbing their little hands while settling on food items.
The average employee usually chases such winged offenders away with a slight scowl and a flick of the wrist, some perhaps not caring if the flies return – once the customer is gone and no one is looking.
“What doesn’t kill fattens; what doesn’t fatten purges.”
This common adage is perhaps silently chanted by the average customer or seller who goes ahead with food orders despite fly sightings. After all, flies are an accepted part of our culture and local menu. What little bakery, pie man/woman or food place does not have flies as an added "ingredient"? What home-cooked feast does not have at least one housefly occasionally landing on a dish?
One does not normally consider that the common fly would use our daily food as a habitat for carrying out its four-stage life cycle – eggs, larvae (maggots), pupae, adult flies.
However, many meat eaters throughout Trinidad and Tobago are possibly contemplating vegetarianism after seeing the viral video recently posted by attorney Christlyn Moore, in which she shows graphic footage of a swarm of large maggots infesting the remnants of a beef pie she had just bitten into, chewed and swallowed.
Along with that beef pie, she had also purchased a currants roll. Ms Moore, are you sure that those little black things in your pastry were only currants?
The written public apology swiftly issued by a bakery (alleged to be the seller of the infamous "maggot pie" – as coined by a Facebook user) did little to assuage the wrath and disgust of the Trinidad and Tobago public, many of whom took to social media, calling for the establishment to be shut down – especially after discovering that the incident might not be a "first" (as claimed in the public apology).
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Apparently in October 2023 a customer posted a photo on the establishment’s Facebook page, showing a small mass of fly eggs in a meat pie she had allegedly purchased from them.
I would imagine that the owner of the establishment genuinely feels horrible because of these now-revealed occurrences and the resulting social media furore. Mistakes happen, but when it comes to food, some mistakes can have damaging, potentially fatal consequences.
However, every cloud has a silver lining and, in this case, it may be that a lesson has been learned – not just by that bakery, but by food establishments across the nation that will now hopefully be extremely vigilant where hygiene, proper storage and shelf life of edibles are concerned
In some parts of the world, maggots, considered a source of nourishment (protein, good fats and trace elements), are consciously consumed. Maggot protein is purported to be superior to soyabean protein.
Cooking or dehydrating the maggots before eating them renders them a safer dietary addition than they would be raw.
Ingesting
