Pret A Manger Allergy Labeling Ruled ‘Inadequate’ After Teen’s Death
|
Version 0 of 1. LONDON — On the way to a vacation in France with her father, Natasha Ednan-Laperouse picked up a sandwich at a Pret A Manger store in Heathrow Airport. She read the label carefully, because she had a severe sesame allergy. But the artichoke, olives and tapenade baguette she chose had sesame seeds baked into its dough, and carried no mention of the fact. Ms. Ednan-Laperouse, 15, collapsed from a cardiac arrest during the flight, and was dead within two hours. On Friday, an inquest at the West London Coroner’s Court found the labeling of the sandwich had been “inadequate,” because it did not warn of the “hidden” sesame seeds. “There was no specific allergen information on the baguette packaging or on the food display cabinet, and Natasha was reassured by that,” the coroner, Sean Cummings, said in his ruling. Pret A Manger did not break the law, Mr. Cummings said, but it had not taken allergen monitoring seriously. The company had been warned of allergic reactions to its baguettes six times before Ms. Ednan-Laperouse’s death on July 17, 2016, the inquest found. He said he would write to the government recommending a change in British food regulations, which require restaurants to inform their customers if any food contains potentially dangerous allergens such as sesame, peanuts or eggs, but does not require items to be individually labeled if they were made on the premises rather than arriving there packaged. “The food labeling laws played Russian roulette with our daughter’s life,” Nadim Ednan-Laperouse, Natasha’s father, said in a news conference on Friday. “This inquest should serve as a watershed moment to make meaningful change and save lives.” The sandwich chain — which has more than 500 locations around the world, mostly in Britain but also in China, France, the Netherlands, Singapore and the United States — has since changed the design of labels on its fridges telling customers to ask staff for allergy information. “All of us at Pret want meaningful change to come from this tragedy. We will ensure that it does,” the company’s chief executive, Clive Schlee, said in a statement on Friday. Another woman who suffered a severe allergic reaction to a Pret sandwich said the action had come too late. Amy Mills, a 37-year-old bank clerk, said she had been hospitalized two years before Ms. Ednan-Laperouse’s death after eating a cheese, tomato and basil sandwich from a Pret store in West London. “They should have changed the labeling when I called in and complained in 2014, but they had to wait for someone to die,” she said in a phone interview. “When I called Pret they apologized and sent me free vouchers, but they didn’t change the labeling straight away — and they still can’t guarantee that they can make sandwiches that do not contain killer allergens,” she said, referring to a note on Pret’s website warning that it uses “multiple ingredients” in its kitchens. A spokesman for Pret said the company could not immediately comment on Ms. Mills’s complaint. The chain’s director of risk and compliance, Jonathan Perkins, said during the inquest that he accepted that several individuals had had both negative and tragic experiences consuming some sandwiches, but said that “thousands of allergy sufferers” had nonetheless been able to shop safely at Pret. “As an allergy sufferer, none of the comments that have come out of Pret since this tragic incident has put me at ease,” Ms. Mills said. “Why should we have to risk it?” |