A LARGE BLACK beetle was found inside a pre-washed bag of salad purchased in a Dublin Tesco.

The woman who bought the salad told TheJournal.ie, “I normally purchase the bagged washed salads from supermarkets, and on this occasion I bought rocket/watercress in Tesco.

I was making myself a salad and was pouring the contents of the bag of salad onto the plate, when I spotted something big and black moving in the bag. A large black beetle and it was alive.

The woman added that as the pack was already washed according to the packaging, she would have thought a beetle of this size would have been picked up on during the process.

The salad was purchased in the Tesco in Clarehall Shopping Centre on Malahide Road, Coolock on Saturday 14 April.

The customer said she contacted the head office on Monday 16 April and was told to drop it into the local store, which she did the next day.

She said details were recorded when she dropped of the salad and she received a €20 voucher but that she didn’t hear back about if the sample was sent to the quality department for an investigation.

The woman said she called the store the following week and was told that the sample she dropped in was still out the back.

I am not looking for money, I am looking to gain confidence again in the product, as this was a weekly purchase of mine and now I have gone completely off bagged salad.

“I wanted to be assured that their supplier was meeting quality standards … as how on earth could a live beetle that size get through a quality check, never mind a cleaning process.”

The woman was only contacted by Tesco after TheJournal.ie made contact with the store about the case.

She was told that all products go through rigorous quality checks and hers was an exception.

However she said, “It’s back to butterhead lettuce for me from now on.”

TheJournal.ie asked Tesco if it sent the sample to a quality department for investigation and if it made any changes to its systems since the beetle was found.

In a statement a spokesperson for Tesco said, “We have extremely high standards for our products we put on our shelves and our growers work hard to inspect our salads carefully, so it’s extremely rare to hear of this sort of incident.

All of our bagged salad produce is sourced from approved suppliers, washed and quality checked before being delivered to stores. We are investigating how this may have happened with our supplier.

“We have tried to contact the customer directly to apologise for the inconvenience caused and to offer a gesture of goodwill by way of further apology.”