KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 14 — Salted egg snacks are slaying our diets. Nothing can stop this savoury, addictive snack. Not even a little lizard, it seems.
If you have not heard, a woman found a lizard inside her packet of Irvins Salted Egg Fish Skin snack. Irvins is the iconic Singapore brand most associated with salted egg fish skin snacks.
Singapore's Straits Times reported that Irvins apologised to the Bangkok-based buyer and the case was reported to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority for investigation.
Here, food entrepreneurs like Kintry Food Co https://kintry.co are reporting that this incident has had no effect on their sales of salted egg potato crisps.
The company which also sells granola and cookies was set up by Michelle Chai who used to make snacks for her daughter. The idea for creating the salted egg snack was inspired by her love of salted egg crabs.
With their snacks, they maintain this issue won't happen since their pork-free kitchen has strict quality controls. Michelle elaborated, "As we do everything from beginning to end by hand in house, we know exactly what is put into our products at each stage. Sometimes if the ingredients are outsourced this may happen therefore care must be taken to ensure this never happens."
Gourmet chipsmaker Chubs Salted Egg Yolk https://www.chubschips.com took a friendly jibe on the situation. Together with their social media team from Personedge Sdn. Bhd., they put up a poster on their Facebook page, proclaiming that, "confirmed no cicaks were harmed in our process."
It has worked in their favour with the poster going viral on social media. Sales has also increased for their salted egg yolk chips after the Irvins incident. "We have gotten a lot of orders and enquiries from Singapore," said Chubs Salted Egg Yolk founder Ben Lim.
He stresses that each packet of their potato crisps goes through a series of standard operating procedures in their production line. "Most importantly, we pack each and every pack individually. Be rest assured that attention is spent checking and packing each packet of chips."
Hou Sek Gourmet Snacks https://www.housek.co offers salted egg potato chips and two types of fish skins: original and coated with salted egg yolk.
Ivan Lim, who started the business, tells us that rather than compromise on quality, he prefers to use premium priced patin fish skin versus the cheaper dory fish skin.
The difference is in the taste... the patin is less fishy. Like the other entrepreneurs, business has not taken a hit with the Irvins issue. In fact, Ivan tells us that sales has increased with the upcoming Chinese New Year, well known as the "snacking season."
Originally started from a home kitchen, the enterpreneur will be moving to bigger premises to cope with the growing demand.
However, he reassures that no machines will be used and every thing will still be done by hand. "We ensure that our factory will follow the standards as food is tricky and one small thing can lead to stomach ache."
