by Alan Jacques
FOLLOWING reports in the Limerick Post last week of fears that killer spiders had infected a consignment of bananas at the Tesco supermarket in the Crescent Shopping Centre, a Lidl shopper has now raised similar concerns.
After reading our front-page story last week, a 33-year-old father-of-four was extra vigilant while doing his grocery shopping at Lidl on Childers Road last Thursday afternoon when he took a literal meaning from retailer’s slogan, “Choose to live a little”.
The Polish-born security worker conducted a close inspection of the bananas to ensure they were free of any deadly infestations. However, alarm bells rang for the South Circular Road resident when he found webbing and an egg-sac on the fruit when he left the store after paying €1.37 for a bag of fun-size bananas.
He feared the eggs contained the spawn of the venomous Brazilian Wandering Spider that can give a man a painful four-hour erection before imminent death.
“It was only when I got the trolley to my car and was out in the sunlight that I saw that there was webbing and a spiders cocoon on the bananas. It looked exactly the same as the picture in the Limerick Post last week,” Pavel revealed.
“After reading the story in the paper I got a fright when I found what looked like spiders eggs and I went straight back into the store. I joined the queue again and when I got to the tills the staff member, who was also Polish, did not take me seriously and told me not to be concerned. I did not get an apology and I felt kind of angry,” he said.
He got his money back but believes more should have been made of his fears that fruit in the store may have been infested with killer arachnids’ eggs.
“Only six months ago, deadly spiders eggs were found in a big shop in Poland. These things happen. When I was inspecting the bananas in Lidl, one of the staff even asked me if I was checking them for spiders. After reading about it in your paper I was not taking any chances.”
When contacted by the Limerick Post this week, arachnologist Myles Nolan at the National History Museum commented, “There are numerous other tree dwelling spiders that might lay eggs on bananas so I wouldn’t assume yet that that the sac belongs to the Brazilian Wandering Spider.”
Lidl were also contacted for a comment. A spokeswoman for the discount supermarket chain said that its Customer Services team have not yet received any official complaint from the Limerick customer about this case.
“We would like to reassure our customers that we have very strict and rigorous quality testing procedures in place for our bananas. This involves washing harvested banana stems with a high pressure hose to dislodge anything hidden between the fingers, before visually expecting and dividing the bananas into clusters which are again washed in a large tank of water. During the ripening process, daily checks are also carried out on bananas for colour checks, temperatures and defects. Further quality checks are again carried out before bananas reach our shelves,” said a statement from Lidl Ireland.
“Bananas are grown in tropical regions, where spiders and other insects are naturally occurring. We have been in close contact with our suppliers to ensure any steps to help prevent reoccurrences are actioned at farms. Should any bananas be found by customers to have possible pests, these will be sent to a laboratory for identification as per our standard procedure. Our customer service department is on hand to handle any issues of this nature.”
Meanwhile, Tesco have introduced rigorous safety measures to ensure their bananas do not pose a safety risk to customers after concerns were raised that killer spiders could have infected a consignment of bananas at one of their Limerick stores.
A customer at the Tesco store in the Crescent Shopping Centre reported to the Limerick Post that bananas he bought there contained what looked like an infestation of eggs from the lethal Brazilian Wandering Spider. The bananas were shipped to Ireland from Costa Rica which is home to the deadly insect.
In a statement issued to the Limerick Post, Tesco confirmed that lab results showed that the skin of the banana contained a ‘harmless spider’.
“We have apologised to the customer for the inconvenience. We can reassure all our customers that we have a rigorous testing system in place for all fruit. We have recently introduced additional treatments at source and we now wash all bananas twice using a higher pressure hose before reaching the shelf,” the statement explained.
