Mansfield mum finds suspected venomous spider inside tub of grapes bought in Shirebrook
A Mansfield mum says she has been ‘put off grapes for life’ after finding a suspected venomous spider inside a tub bought in Shirebrook.
Karen Macis, a nurse, from Mansfield, says she purchased the Brazilian red seedless variety from the Shirebrook Lidl on December 7, and put them in her fridge.
The following day, the mum of one said her 18-year-old son Joel opened them.
Karen said: “My son shouted ‘mum there’s a web all over these grapes.’ I said, ‘oh, just wash it off, it’ll be fine.’
“But when I looked, it was not a normal web, it was all horrible and stringy. I don’t like spiders and I spotted one at the bottom of the punnet. It was unusual, we think it was a venomous brown widow after Googling it, it has the red hour glass marking.
"It must have been alive when it went in the fridge and frozen to death. I put it in a container. I was still a bit scared it might run.
“I always check bananas for spiders. It has put me off grapes for life! My son was going to preserve the spider in resin but it’s shrivelled up!”
Karen contacted Lidl. “I filled in the batch number, barcode, lot number, country of origin, they said leave it with us for 7-10 days but no-one got back to me.
"I contacted them again, they wanted the details again, by then I’d thrown away the packet. They had the details. I had several customer service numbers. I felt a bit miffed by their poor customer service, but they did send £20 in vouchers.”
A LIdl spokesperson said: “We were very sorry to hear of this. We work very closely with our suppliers to ensure that the fresh fruit and vegetables in our stores are of the highest possible quality. We were disappointed that, on this occasion, the product did not meet the high standards that we and our customers expect.
"The matter was escalated to our quality assurance team. Without sufficient information on the packaging we were not able to launch an investigation with the supplier. We encourage the customer to contact our customer services team with information on the packaging so we may investigate this further.”