No, a bag of Tesco carrots was not produced in Chernobyl

A picture claiming to show Tesco carrots grown in Chernobyl has been shared hundreds of times on Facebook.

But as we’ve written before, this picture has been edited and was originally shared as a joke. 

A clearer version of the picture, posted to X (formerly Twitter) in 2020 shows that the label has been digitally drawn over to hide the real production location, while the text reading “Chernobyl” does not curve with the plastic packaging indicating it has been added later. 

The person who shared the picture later added a follow-up post in which he described it as an “in-joke” adding, “I can confirm that Tesco’s are not selling badly photoshopped radioactive carrots”. 

Tesco also confirmed to Full Fact last year that the image is fake and that it doesn’t source any of its produce from the region, the location of the 1986 nuclear power station disaster.

The original account that shared the post to X further explained that the joke was in reference to a news story at the time in which a bag of carrots with the Red Tractor logo (indicating a food product was produced entirely in Britain), also had a smaller label saying the carrots were grown in Spain. 

With regards to this a spokesperson for Red Tractor confirmed the Spanish label had been added by mistake. 

While jokes like these—in which photos or videos are edited in a satirical way—may seem harmless, we’ve seen many examples over the years of them being shared seriously online. 

You can find advice on checking these posts for yourself in our blogs on misleading images and videos.