A dad was left shocked after discovering a family of five spiders in his supermarket raspberries.

David Leigh, 34, of Clay Pits in Braintree, bought a punnet of raspberries from Tesco in Great Notley only to discover the creatures inside.

He said: “I buy raspberries every day from Tesco in Great Notley. On Tuesday I took them to work to eat, opened them and I saw a spider.

“I thought ‘OK, I’m going to take a picture’ and as I was taking it I saw another one. I would say they were the size of a fingernail; they looked like little crab spiders with claws.

“As I was holding the cover back I saw there were five of them in there; I t h o u g h t ‘I’m not going to eat any of the raspberries now’ and threw the pack away after I took photos of them. I think there must be a spider nest somewhere, because it’s too random to have five in one pack.

“If it was one, I would have just got rid of it but five is enough to put me off. I’ve got a three-year-old son and he usually just puts his hand in the pack and starts eating, so what would have happened if he got to them?

“I contacted Tesco and they told me they can’t investigate because I didn’t keep the spiders, even though I took photos, which is what I’m annoyed about. They should put a recall out to get them back but have said they can’t because we don’t have the spiders now.”

After being contacted by the Times, a Tesco spokesman said the matter would be investigated.

He said: “We sell half a million punnets of raspberries every week and our growers work hard to clean and inspect all the fruit carefully, however, given the freshness of our produce incidents like this can happen on very rare occasions.

“We’ve apologised to Mr Leigh, have offered a gesture of goodwill and will update him on the findings of our investigation.”