Puzzled shopper finds military-grade bullet in packet of nuts from favourite supermarket

A DAD-of-two thought he’d gone nuts after finding a rogue bullet casing in his breakfast. Richard Morrow, 43, was tipping pecans into a bowl of yoghurt when he discovered the US-made cartridge at the bottom of the packet. He’d noticed that the bag of nuts, which he bought from a Lidl store in Kidsgrove near Stoke-on-Trent a few months ago, was heavier than normal - but didn’t think much of it. He told The Sun: “I looked down at my brekkie and thought ‘ there’s an extra shell in my pecans…It’s pretty nuts really.”.

The inscription on the brass case reads ‘Frontier 223’ - a type of cartridge manufactured by American ammunition company Hornardy, based in Nebraska. The military-grade bullet which would have been discharged from it is designed for a rifle, most commonly semi-automatic weapons like an AR-15 - making it suitable for target shooting and varmint hunting. Baffled by the discovery, electronics engineer Richard, from Alsager in Cheshire, went looking for answers online.

He posted on a Reddit forum, where social media users suggested the case may have been mistakenly picked up during harvesting. One person responded: “This is spent brass that was probably picked up during harvest. Colour and shape close enough to a pecan that it made it through multiple checks.”. Another added: “These are used in a multitude of different firearms, so there’s no way to reliably narrow it down. They are used in anything from target shooting to hunting and law enforcement, and even self-defense.

"Considering that pecans are native to the United States and Northern Mexico, and the nature of plantations they are harvested from, it’s not easy to narrow down where it might have come from.”. Nearly 80 per cent of global pecan production comes from the USA, with most grown in the states of Georgia, New Mexico and Texas. In 2022, the country produced 409,000 acres of pecans and harvested over 126 million of the nuts.

More than a quarter is exported abroad. Almost half of households in all three states own at least one gun. Richard, who is dad to sons Alex, 11, and Leo, nine, said: “If they are collecting them off the ground, then it’s possible a stray got picked up in the lot.”. Lidl said it will carry out a full investigation into the incident. The supermarket giant has asked Richard to post the bullet casing to their quality assurance department.

A spokesperson said: “We were very sorry to hear of this matter, as it’s never our intention for a customer to be dissatisfied in any way. We work very closely with our suppliers to ensure that the products we sell meet highest quality and safety standards, and have not received any other enquiries of a similar nature. “As soon as the customer got in touch, their enquiry was immediately escalated to our quality assurance team, with further information requested from the customer so that a full investigation can be carried out.”.