A Tesco shopper claims she was left stunned after she discovered dozens of insects in a new bag of flour and was told by Tesco it was a common problem.
Dani Stewart opened the supermarket’s own brand self-raising flour this week after purchasing the item from its Forfar shop.
The mum-of-five was about to bake a carrot cake for her family before discovering the creepy crawlies roaming about the packaging.
Dani flagged the issue up to the company’s online team after making the “gross” discovery.
But the former Dundee College student was left taken aback with the flippant response she claims she received.
She added: “The bag was brand new and sealed and when I opened it up there was loads of little bugs inside, it was gross.”
“When I first contacted them just to make them aware of the problem I wasn’t wanting a refund, the flour is only 60p.
“I was more concerned there might have been an issue with this batch and they might want to notify their supplier.
“They told me that they thought the creatures were Psocids (booklice) and they were completely harmless.”
According to Dani, the case handler then implied to her that the issue was caused by poor hygiene in her home.
“I’m sure no one would want to discover this contents in a brand new bag of flour which hadn’t been opened until that night,” she added.
“They went on to say how clean their factories were so it basically implied the bugs had come from my house.
“I thought it was a bit cheeky to respond in this way and went back to them to explain that.”
Tesco’s customer care team apologised and stressed the staff member had not intended to imply that the creatures had been in her house, but said they were a “common issue” within flour.
She added: “I’m not sure what I’m more shocked or annoyed at, the first response where she implied these had come from my house or the second response.
“They’ve basically said it’s common to find these in flour – like it’s completely normal to buy a bag of flour from the shop, open it and be greeted with a load of bugs.”
A Tesco spokesperson said: “We were very sorry to hear about this. We have extremely high standards for the food we put on our shelves and we work closely with our suppliers to ensure there are robust hygiene standards and pest control processes in place at our flour mills.
“We are investigating this issue further with our supplier and have given the customer a voucher as a gesture of goodwill.”
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