A Florida Restaurant Is Accused Of Sending Out A Meal With Live Maggots, According To A Facebook Post

A Florida restaurant and a customer who claimed she was sent home with food with live maggots in it are battling it out in the media over who is telling the truth, Fox News is reporting.

Last week, Keondra White wrote on Facebook that she’d ordered a plate of jerk chicken to go from the Caribbean Sunrise Bakery and Restaurant in Jacksonville, but that when she got home to eat it, the dish had live maggots crawling around in it. She also posted a video of the food, which the Inquisitr will not post here (click the link above to see it for yourself).

“WARNING @CaribbeanSunriseBakery&Restaurant CARIBBEAN SUNRISE ON MAIN STREET!! WARNING… This was MY food…..”

Oddly enough, the restaurant’s denial was perhaps not as strong as the situation would dictate. First, the restaurant did acknowledge in a Facebook post that there was an “incident” at the restaurant that “compromised [their] standards,” but stopped short of admitting sending out food with maggots in it. Second, they didn’t deny specifically that there were maggots in the food, instead insisting only that the food they sent out was “safe.”

“We have retraced all possible steps to determine where, when and how the quality of the food could have been compromised and put additional measures in place to prevent such occurrences.”

Owner Denise Daley says that her restaurant’s jerk chicken – a spicy, smoked dish – is first baked in an oven, then smoked in a grill, then kept in hot box, and then microwaved when the customer orders it.

However, Lauri Wright, a nutrition professor at the University of North Florida, said that those precautions might not necessarily be enough, depending on how well the restaurant handles food safety.

“You want it a good 180 degrees internal temperature. If you don’t hit that, the maggots could still be alive.”

Even so, if there are maggot eggs in the food, then maggots may very well emerge.

“Often, (the maggots) come after the food has been prepared, has been cooked, and when it’s sitting out.”

As it turns out, the restaurant doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to food safety. WJAX-TV (Jacksonville) reports that health inspectors visited the restaurant on two consecutive days and noted violations on both of those days. Some of those violations included flies in the dining room and kitchen, as well as chicken and beef not being kept in a cold-enough storage area.