The Jakarta Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) conducted raids on stores carrying imported food in the capital, following the agency’s findings of dead worms inside cans of imported mackerel.

BPOM Jakarta head Sukriadi Darma said on Thursday that he had deployed several teams to carry out the impromptu visits to the food retailers. “We started the raids this very morning,” Sukriadi said, as quoted by kompas.com. 

Dead worms were found inside mackerel cans imported from China, under brand names Famerjack, IO and HOKI. The product importers were based in Batam of the Riau Islands and in Jakarta.

The agency has instructed the importers to destroy the imported products and stop importing the food from China.

The agency has also urged people to report any unusual findings in canned food products by contacting the BPOM call center at 1500533 or sending text messages to 081219999533. (vny)