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Alloa childminder horrified after finding ANTS crawling all over her sealed Tesco pizza
Tesco chiefs have 'apologised sincerely' after Christine McKinsley, 54, made the grim discovery
A CHILDMINDER was left horrified when she discovered ANTS crawling all over her sealed pizza.
Christine McKinsley, 54, spotted the pesky bugs snacking on her £5 meal after picking it up from her local Tesco store in Alloa, Clackmannanshire.
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The mum-of-three filmed the moment she found the surprise topping on her stuffed crust “cheese meltdown” treat on November 4.
In the stomach-churning clip a couple of the creepy crawlies can be seen scuttling around the pizza base - UNDER the wrapper.
Christine told the Scottish Sun Online: “Your automatic reaction is yuck.
“The thought of feeding my friends or kids a pizza with ants on it makes me sick.
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“You can only see a couple of them in the video but there were more of them.
“You would think the packaging would have killed them. But I’m glad it didn’t because it made them easier to spot.”
Christine snapped up the pizza as part of a bonfire weekend celebration with her family.
Luckily, the 54-year-old and husband Edward, also 54, spied the ants before popping it in the oven.
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Christine said: “I had the box sitting on top of the oven.
“My husband was going to put it in the oven for me when he noticed the ants.
“He thought they were on the outside of the box at first and tried to flick them off.
“It was only then we realised they were actually inside the box and the wrapper.
“The box was still sealed, the packaging and everything.”
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The disgusted mum marched the pizza straight back to the store and demanded an apology from bosses.
Tesco refunded Christine for the pest-ridden pizza and stumped up a £25 gift card in compensation.
She said: “The staff agreed it was shocking.
“They took my pizza to a freezer in the back where it would be sent off for inspection.
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“After speaking to customer services I wanted to check they were taking my complaint seriously so I went to the pizza aisle.
“Thankfully they were already taking the pizzas off the shelf.”
But Christine, a self-employed childminder from Alloa, said her career could have been ruined if health inspectors had found the infested pizza in her home.
She said: “I could have fed that to my kids.
“If the pizza was in my fridge and I’d been inspected that day I could have lost my health certificates.
“But Tesco didn’t seem bothered about that. They kept telling me it was still sealed so everything was okay.
“I was a bit peeved by it all.”
In a grovelling letter to the sickened childminder, the food giant apologised sincerely for the “upset caused”.
Virginia Morris, Customer Service Manager, wrote: “I can appreciate how disappointing it must have been to discover there were flies under the cellophane.
“We do have procedures in place to prevent this sort of thing happening. However, clearly something’s gone wrong this time, so I’ll contact the manufacturers,
“They’ll look into how this happened. From here, we’ll make every effort to prevent it happening to anyone else.
In the letter sent last week, she continued: “I would feel the same given the circumstances and apologise sincerely for the upset caused.
“I know I can’t undo what’s happened but I would like to say sorry.”
Today, a Tesco spokesman said: “We do everything we can to ensure our pizzas are of the highest quality so we are disappointed to hear that Christine’s pizza did not meet our high standards.
"We have apologised and offered Christine a gesture of goodwill, and will investigate how this may have happened with our supplier."
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