Aldi has said it will the change the name of its “rape yellow” paint after it was branded “offensive” by a sexual assault victim.
The product is labelled as Rapeseed Yellow on the supermarket’s website but was marketed as ‘rape yellow’ on the shelves.
The name will now be changed after a woman, who has been a victim of rape, complained when she saw the paint while shopping with her son.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she was “furious” when she saw the tin at an Aldi branch in Coventry.
She told the Coventry Telegraph: “I looked at the paint and thought it can’t possibly say that, you have got to be kidding me, there’s no way they would sell that. I started choking.
“I got straight out of there. I was furious and upset.
“I thought maybe I was being sensitive because of my situation, but I sent pictures to my friends and they were all shocked by it. They couldn’t believe what I was saying.
“I contacted Aldi afterwards and they just assumed I was being sensitive because I was a rape victim.
“You wouldn’t sell something called abortion red or poo brown. To me it’s the same thing, it’s offensive.”
An Aldi spokesperson said: “This paint is a colour widely referred to in the industry as ‘RAL 1021 Rape Yellow’, which refers to rapeseed.
“The colour name will be altered to rapeseed yellow for all future production of this paint.”
