You might have heard of the current brouhaha involving Irvins Salted Egg Fish Skin packet containing a lizard.

While that might have been jarring to most of us, one lady in particular would have felt more of a sense of déjà vu than anything else.

You see, Instagram user El3na posted a rather jarring photo almost eight months ago.

The theme of which was: "there's a lizard in my Irvins packet".

Here it is.

Based on the post's location tag, it appears that the packet may have been purchased in Singapore.

Just like in the more recent case, this lizard seems to have either been dried out, or deep-fried, with obvious salted egg flakes around its webbed feet.

Here is the caption accompanying the post.

"@irvinsaltedegg .. on trend with the #crispyrendang.. we got #crispylizard ?????"

You know this post is dated when the caption makes reference to the crispy rendang saga.

There didn't appear to be much traction for that particular image though.

8 months later

Fast forward eight months, another lizard, perhaps a vengeful offspring of the first neglected reptilian corpse, sprung up in another packet of Irvins.

Irvins apologised profusely for the incident.

View this post on Instagram

Dear Customers, Fans, Friends & Partners of IRVINS Salted Egg, • All of us at IRVINS Salted Egg were very shocked and devastated to hear that one of our customers discovered a dead lizard in a snack pouch that she opened. Quality control is one of the most important aspects of our company and we are always on our toes because our customers’ safety is everything to us. We really want to sincerely apologize to the customer and everyone who is affected by this incident directly or indirectly. We take full responsibility for the goods that we sell and everything in it. I have since personally contacted the customer and will continue to do so to make sure that she and her family is alright. • We promise to investigate this further as we don’t have a full explanation on how the dead lizard ended up in our snack pouch and we promise to make the necessary changes in our production to ensure this will never happen again. The case has been reported to AVA and we will cooperate with them fully. • For all of our customers who still have our salted egg snacks at home, please kindly check on the back of the pouch for the expiry date. If you have a snack pouch that expires on 16 October 2019 or if you are uncomfortable with consuming our snacks, kindly email us at [email protected] so that our Customer Experience team could assist you with the product recall and refunds required for the snacks. All recalled products would be disposed of. • This is a major blow to us, however we promise that we will fix this issue and continue to be an honest and responsible company to all of you. Rest assured that we are doing the best we could to serve our customers with the best quality & service nonetheless. • Regards, Irvin Gunawan CEO of IRVINS Salted Egg

A post shared by IRVINS Salted Egg (@irvinsaltedegg) on Jan 1, 2019 at 9:45pm PST

Here is El3na commenting on the apology more than eight months after the incident came and went.

It appears that she was offered a refund... provided she returned to Singapore to hand in the pack she had bought.

It is unclear where she was at that time, but it appears she is mainly situated in Australia.

What does seem clear, however, is that according to her, apologies and explanations were both lacking from the measures taken in her case back then.

We reached out to Irvins for a response to this particular case, but they told us they are unable to give a comment as they are still investigating the more recent case with the Agri-food and Veterinary Authority.

This on the back of Irvins's otherwise really well-done apology that seemed genuine and contrite.

There is sufficient hope that this, albeit older, incident will be handled with respect as well.

Further reading about the case:

Top photos via Jane Holloway and El3na