Eagle-eyed fishmonger catches out Aldi ‘error’
GERMAN supermarket giant Aldi was forced to ‘withdraw’ wild Irish salmon from its Christmas catalogue after it turned out to be farmed and Scottish, thanks to an eagle-eyed fishmonger from County Wexford.
Fishmonger Niall Murray, from Milehouse, Enniscorthy, complained directly to Aldi after its Christmas brochure said its wild salmon had been ‘caught in the estuaries of Ireland’.
The catalogue also claimed that the product was ‘exquisite rope-hung smoked salmon’ with an ‘impossibly low’ price of €28.56 per kg.
Niall, who runs the family business Nick’s Fish in Ashbourne, said it was impossible to sell wild salmon for that price.
‘Wild Irish salmon costs around €80 per kg and it’s only available for one month in the year. Wild salmon is a prized product, it’s the king of fish,’ said Niall.
‘It took a few days, but they eventually admitted it was in fact a Scottish farmed product,’ he said.
ALDI responded to the complaint by saying the ‘product will not be going on sale in Ireland as previously advertised’.
It also stated that ‘ there was a descriptive error in our Christmas product brochure in relation to one smoked salmon product’.
Niall said the Aldi issue was ‘ the first to take hold’ and follows numerous postings on his company’s Facebook page about the quality of fish sold as wild and Irish.
A spokesperson for the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) said it was aware of the complaint about Aldi’s ‘wild salmon’ and had followed up the complaint.