Shopper turned away from buying 100 cucumbers during fruit and veg crisis
A shopper was barred from buying 100 cucumbers in a store – as fruit and veg rationing spreads across Britain.
Personal trainer Lisa Fearns, 49 – who filled a
Lidl trolley to make detox drinks for her business – said that as she paid the manager ‘came running out of the back saying I’m buying too much fruit and veg and I can’t purchase that much.’
The mum from Kirby, Merseyside, has bought a huge number of cucumbers every week for the past three years to make the drinks she sells online.
As Tesco and
Aldi joined Morrisons and Asda limiting items such as lettuce, tomatoes and peppers, Lisa warned of ‘a battle in the shops’.
Snow and flooding in Spain and North Africa has hit exporters and left a growing number of grocers’ shelves bare. Prices for domestic produce have also soared as surging energy bills push up farmers’ costs – with some in the UK and Netherlands not powering up greenhouses.
Environment secretary Therese Coffey yesterday told the National Farmers’ Union conference in
Birmingham: ‘We can’t control the weather in Spain.’
NFU president Minette Batters said later: ‘No, but we can be encouraging these guys to be producing here. That’s something we really need to hone in on.’
Ms Fearns, a mum-of-two said she had been regularly buying 100 cucumbers from
Lidl.
She told Facebook friends: ‘What the actual f***ity f***! I’ve been barred from Lidl for purchasing too much fruit and veg.
‘Didn’t like their cucumbers anyway. I said I’d take my custom to
Aldi.’
There, she explained later, she defied a limit of three per person by picking up six cucumbers, adding: ‘They didn’t say anything.’
She said her usual 15-minute trip took more than two hours as she had to visit five stores to stock up.
‘I’m stressed about what I’m going to do every week,’ she added. ‘I’m going to have to find a pleasant, happy, fruit and vegetable store that would like to take my business.’ Tesco and Aldi last night announced shoppers would be limited to three each of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.
A day earlier Asda restricted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, salad bags, broccoli, cauliflower and raspberry punnets to three.
Morrisons put a cap of two per shopper for tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and peppers.
Lidl said: ‘We want to ensure all of our customers have access to the products they need. We are therefore unfortunately not able to facilitate wholesale purchases.’
Shoppers also faced rationing of some goods during the Covid crisis.
metro.co.uk
)
