Lidl Ireland has yet to answer Irish Farmers Journal queries on its use of product names, which call vegetables on its shelves ‘Irish’ despite having a UK country of origin listed on packaging.

This week saw a number of product lines across Lidl stores in Ireland selling vegetables lines labelled on shelves as ‘Irish broccoli’ and ‘Irish courgettes’, but also being individually labelled as being of UK origin.

Other loose vegetables with origins stated as Irish on shelves appear to originate from overseas too, including more courgettes, cauliflowers and York cabbage.

On examination, some boxes of these ‘origin: Ireland’ loose vegetables show up to be of UK or Dutch origin, according to their labels.

Lidl suggested last week that a labelling “disparity” had occurred at only one Co Dublin store, but on Monday, the Irish Farmers Journal visited three of its stores, all of which had similar disparities.

Issue raised in August

A Co Dublin shopper had alerted Lidl’s social media team to some potential discrepancies in vegetable origin labelling over one week ago, after which the retailer’s Twitter account stated that the labelling “Looks like a mistake on our part alright” on Monday 28 August.

“Can you please let us know what store it is and we’ll get on the case straight away and get it sorted ASAP, thanks again!”

“We can confirm the disparity between produce name and origin is due to a technical error our team is fixing as we speak,” the social media team wrote on Thursday.

The shopper had raised the issue after seeing the signage and labelling present in Lidl’s store in Lusk, Co Dublin.

“We had a technical issue with some new signs in one of our stores that has been fixed, but if you spot anything else that we should know about let us know on here and we’ll get the right people on the case and get it sorted ASAP,” Lidl claimed on Friday.