I WAS disgusted to read about the recent burglary at a food bank in Thornaby (Echo, July 29). Whilst reading I realised something.

Readers will know that tinned items, coffee, jars of jams, etc all have a use by date printed on them.

However, many readers might not be aware that so these various items can be sorted according to their use by date, food bank volunteers rewrite the date in large print onto that item using a marker pen.

Shops, supermarkets and food distributors don’t do this, but food banks do.

So, the presence of a date repeated in marker pen shows the origin was from a food bank.

So, if these items were stolen to re-sell (say to a corner shop), then the dating with marker pen shows them to be stolen.

Any customer who realised this and then informed the police would mean that particular shop facing criminal prosecution.

This means the thieves would be stupid to try and resell them, as would any shop thinking of buying them.

Consequently, the best thing the thieves can do would be to return them via an anonymously made call or online report to Crimestoppers.

CT Riley, Spennymoor