Aldi has removed thousands of packs of frozen mixed vegetables from its shelves after a customer said she found half a rat inside a bag.

Pat Bateman, 60, said she had just finished feeding lunch to her two-year-old granddaughter and was putting the packet back in the freezer when she spotted the rodent.

She told the Sun: “It was nearly empty so that’s why I spotted something that looked out of place in the bottom of the bag. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I pulled it out. It just looked like half a rat. It had fur on it. I showed my husband and because it was frozen we left it to defrost before taking another look at it.”

Bateman, a retired florist from Liskeard, Cornwall, said she took the bag back to her local branch of the German supermarket chain and was offered £30 off her next shop. Unsatisfied with the response, she contacted Aldi’s head office, sending them photographs of the offending packet.

Bateman said the offer of compensation had since been increased to £550 but she felt that still fell short of what she should be entitled to and had refused to accept it.



“We felt physically sick after finding the rat,” she said. “We had eaten almost all of the bag before we saw it, and what’s even worse, I fed it to my youngest granddaughter.”

The Sun said an internal Aldi document reported there had been three complaints – two from from Environmental Health and a third from a customer – of “pieces of small rodent being found in one batch of mixed vegetables”. It said the removal from sale was enacted last month.

The offending product was said to have been supplied to Aldi by Agrifreez in Saden, Belgium, which sent out nearly 40,000 packets just before Christmas.

According to the Sun, the internal Aldi report said: “An investigation is under way to identify the root cause and implement corrective action to prevent any re-occurrence before production restarts.”

In a statement, the supermarket said: “Following Mrs Bateman’s complaint, we removed this product from sale to prevent any further issues. We have suspended all orders from this production site whilst we investigate this matter.”

In 2016 a customer from Northwich, Cheshire, claimed she found rat droppings in a yoghurt purchased from Aldi.