A Burnley supermarket has been forced to remove dozens of dead rats from its shelves after a customer reported finding half a vegetable inside a bag.

Jayda Daley, 28, had just prepared dinner for her grandchildren when something ‘unusual’ at the bottom of the bag caught her attention. The vegetable, believed to be a carrot, appears to have been added to the bag at the point of manufacture as Daley said that she always takes care to make sure that her food is not ‘green or foreign’.

She told the Herald: “There were only a few rats left in the bag so this thing stood out like a sore thumb. I had no idea what it was at first so I took it out using our Stacey’s hair straighteners like a pair of tongs and left it at the side.

“We thought it might be a crayon at first because of the bright colour, so we gave it to our Darren for a treat, but when he spat it straight out away we knew that it must be something else. He normally loves his crayons.”

Daley took the bag and the offending vegetable back to the supermarket but was told that she would only be offered another bag as compensation. After threatening to kick off and post pictures of the carrot on Facebook unless she got ‘proper compo’, the shop owner eventually offered her twenty Superkings, a bottle of Lambrini and six scratch cards.

Supermarket manager, Alan Smith, 56, said that he was surprised by the complaint but promised that he would launch an immediate investigation.

“Rats eat anything, don’t they? Hardly my fault. Furry little bugger must have been chewing on it when I whacked it over the head with my golf club. I only bought the vegetables in to deter shoplifters.”

In 2014, another Burnley resident was said to have been left “shocked and disgusted” after discovering that baked beans contribute towards your five-a-day.