Pub chain fined following 9-year old’s severe allergic reaction
https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/about-the-council/news/news-archive/allergencase
Posted by Alexanderrr3
Pub chain fined following 9-year old’s severe allergic reaction
https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/about-the-council/news/news-archive/allergencase
Posted by Alexanderrr3
9 Comments
>Ralph has a wheat allergy, so on two occasions Lauren asked the waiting staff, who then eventually checked with the chefs in the kitchen if the sausages on the children’s menu contained wheat. She was reassured that they did not.
>After eating a quarter of the sausage, which the family were reassured was safe for their son to eat, Ralph began to feel unwell. The family left shortly after and when they got home it became clear that Ralph was having a severe allergic reaction with parts of his body swelling, problems breathing and red hives all over him. After a course of steroids and some adrenaline at the local hospital, he was rushed to Lister hospital by ambulance where he was monitored overnight.
There is literally no excuse for this.
This is how you kill people.
The pub has got off lightly here.
Offered a free meal for nearly killing a child. How can people be so oblivious? Especially in hospitality.
I wonder if they even admitted what happened.
It’s all to easy to say you made a mistake, but what was the error which led to this happening? I suspect it’s a case of a staff member disbelieving a food allergy or either not bothering to look at the ingredients and providing incorrect information to the servers.
Strange, generally most big chains will make you read and agree to an allergy policy, essentially stating that they take reasonable precautions but make no guarantees, ultimately it’s the customer who accepts the risk. Obviously here reasonable precautions weren’t taken, but if I had an allergy to a very common ingredient so severe I could die, I certainly wouldn’t place my fate in the hands of minimum wage workers.
Unfortunately, this is the fine standard in British food quality that people with allergies have always come to expect and it’s through blatant luck more than anything else that more of us aren’t dead.
Business owners whether in restaurants or stuff you buy off the shelves don’t give a shit because the chances of them being caught are slim due to the backed up criminal justice system, minimal food hygiene checks (local authority cuts), and the fact that allergy sufferers either won’t risk eating anything not made at home from raw or if they do, they hope their Epipen works.
There has been a sharp increase in food product recalls lately, and regular food products just stamp a “this product may contain” or “made on a line that handles” as they don’t want to be bothered with resolving cross-contamination.
If you have more than one allergy (usually the case), the “free-from” ranges are unsafe. That’s not including all the people who don’t even believe allergies exist.
It’s a dangerous time to be alive.
absolutely no excuse at all.
last time i was asked about a serious allergy i went to the kitchen and fetched them the box with the ingredients written on the side.
bigger chains usually have a computerized system that filters by allergy, without that SOMEONE NEEDS TO CHECK!
My son has a sesame allergy and this sort of thing terrifies me. All restaurants should have a booklet containing all the ingredients they use in each dish. There should be training given that focuses on allergies because some people are worryingly lax about this, as though they think people are exaggerating or even lying about their allergies.
Allergies are on the rise as well so restaurants need to up their standards to keep up.
I worked at McDonald’s, and their plan for allergies was this allergy book by the counter. If someone asked about allergens, we’d show them the book; they decided from there.
I just don’t get why you would trust sausages when rusk or breadcrumbs are common ingredients in sausages