Stupor last week in an Intermarché de Sillery, near Reims. Four spiders were discovered in the fruit and vegetable section, among the bananas. Once there, firefighters recovered two. The third was found a day later while the last was crushed. At first glance, the firefighters on site thought of the banana spider, a venomous tropical species. “This type of spider often comes to rest in the middle of banana bunches,” explains Christine Rollard, teacher-researcher in Araneology at the Paris Museum of Natural History. And to resume: “In countries facing deforestation, these nocturnal spiders come to banana plantations. It’s one of the only places where they can find shade,” she adds.
This recent case is far from isolated. Reports are fairly regular in batches from Central America, Ghana or in the French DROMs (Guadeloupe or Martinique). In September, a similar scene occurred in a Lidl, in Toulouse. But in fact, the banana spider is only rarely identified in France. In Sillery, the trend was confirmed, since the insects were native spiders, found in France, according to firefighters. But how did those arachnids end up in that carton of bananas from Guadeloupe?
Trick question. The NGO Foodwatch underlines “the recurrence of this problem”, and suggests “to reinforce controls in the ports”, the organization not being able to act on its own. In reality, she cannot seize the file. “In the health sense, as long as there is no proven problem, we cannot do anything”, she explains, while ensuring that “if we are told of the risks linked to these incidents, then we will alert population”.
On the side of the exporters, we kick in touch. And the Intermarché supply system does not help to unravel the matter. Each Intermarché has its own network of suppliers, which therefore changes from one point of sale to another. “The suppliers are very different”, confirms the distributor, who does not wish to comment specifically on “this isolated case”. The group of producers “Banane de Guadeloupe et de Martinique”, which exports 70% of its bananas to mainland France, did not respond to requests from Le Figaro either.
Almost systematically called when similar cases occur, the French Association of Araneology, of which Christine Rollard is a member, has not been called upon in the Marne. A problem according to the expert, who followed the case in the press. She regrets not having been able to examine the spiders to precisely determine the species of these famous arachnids.
Moreover, the collective psychosis vis-à-vis these anomalies is strong in France. With each new case detected, the pattern is the same. “Tropical spiders are very little known in the West. Somewhere, we maintain this anxiety-provoking climate because we know very little about them, ”explains Christine Rollard. The arachnid is often suspected of being a banana spider, before seeing this thesis swept away and discovering a more common species in France. This further complicates the identification of the person(s) responsible.
