Hong Kong bakery fined HK$9,000 after customer bites into pork bun only to find lizard inside
- Woman bought food item at Maxim’s Cakes branch in Tuen Mun but only discovered gecko when she went to eat it two days later
- Catering firm has been fined 55 times so far over similar incidents with magistrate calling case ‘a bit outrageous’
Hong Kong catering giant Maxim’s was fined HK$9,000 (US$1,160) on Friday after a woman took a bite out of a bun only to find a small lizard among the filling.
The questionable food item was sold at Maxim’s Cakes bakery at Butterfly Plaza in Tuen Mun to Cheung Mei-yee, who kept it in a bag at her home.
She ate it two days later, but on her second bite found a 4cm (1.6-inch) gecko lying amid a mixture of pork floss, seaweed and Japanese rice cake.
She called the shop owner to complain and also filed a formal complaint at the local government offices.
Maxim’s Caterers, which runs the shop, pleaded guilty at Tuen Mun Court to a count of offering food “not of the quality demanded by the purchaser” in relation to the incident on October 2, 2019, under an ordinance governing public hygiene.
