After being served dairy in a pub last year I had a very severe anaphylactic reaction and ended up in intensive care over night. This is my Personal Witness Statement.
I’ve been wanting to share this with you all for some time now but it’s a difficult one for me. Talking about anaphylaxis is very personal; sometimes it really upsets me. This year I’ve reached a place (over a year after the last incident) where I feel I can talk about what happened and remain calm and in control.
The experience, of a very severe allergic reaction and a night in intensive care will never leave me.
So here is my Personal Witness Statement, which I read out in court last year. Trading Standards prosecuted the pub who made a mistake and served me a meal containing dairy by mistake, despite numerous checks and communications both before and on the day.
I don’t want to dwell on where this happened or call out the pub in question. I know this was a very difficult time for them and I hope they continue to serve their local community safely.
They were fined £23k by Trading Standards but I would like to stress, that this money goes to the local council, none of it paid to the victim (I hate that word)
If you want to read more about this incident, here are a few links:
Hertforshire Restaurant Fined after customer suffered severe allergic reaction
Artichoke pub apologises to woman who suffered severe allergic reaction –
In response to the pubs repeated assertions that they wholeheartedly apologised to me, they actually didn’t. I suspect their lawyers guarded them against getting in contact, but I didn’t feel that anyone really apologised apart from one email when it happened and that was only in response to my email to them. It was pretty much radio silence and it felt to me that no one cared and that they were just hoping it would all blow over.
Advice to any restaurants who are unfortunate enough to experience an allergy related incident, I would offer some advice:
- Be upfront, honest and kind to the customer. Sit with them, talk to them, explain what might have gone wrong. Do not hide, ignore the customer and refuse to communicate, which is what happened in my case, though I suspect this was more down to fear from the staff who hadn’t had sufficient training to know how to deal with such a serious incident.
- Say Sorry – And really mean it. I never felt that anyone from the pub tried to contact me, apologised or reached out. Though as I said above, this may have been on the advice of their lawyers.
Anyway I hope you found the video of my statement interesting. It was certainly a difficult document to write and even harder to read it out myself in court, but I’m so glad I did.
This was made doubly difficult because I could see the owners of the pub in the room at the time. A very emotional experience and I did struggle to get through it all without shedding a few tears.
Thanks for watching and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
How do you find it eating out with your allergies? Are you too scared to eat out? Do you find it hard to trust pubs and restaurants to take your requests seriously?
That just breaks my heart for you Ruth. Lots of hugs. And please don’t risk your life for food, take your own? That’s what I do and I’m not even anaphylactic. I don’t know how you do it! x
Thank you Micki, and believe me I am VERY careful before eating out. There is a military type procedure that goes into play because it is very hard to trust anyway. Even I make mistakes. And as for how I do it… i think it’s my calling, my superpower. I always feel I could do with the support that’s not there so by doing this I hope I can help others not feel so alone, find support and know that they are by no means the only one. There is help and support out there. We just have to go searching. Love your blogs too. It was you who got me thinking about how messed up my mind was and I’ve been working on that ever since. Now there is a good subject for a blog post. It is so important to understand that monkey mind when it comes to food, eating habits, relationships with food, anxiety and how that affects EVERYTHING and the knock on effect for my skin and eczema. It’s a journey…
The lack of food allergies training at cooks and servers level is very scary for allergic custumers.
I am very allergic to soy…. when I ask if a food contains or has been fried in soy oil, the usual response is “I don’t think so” and then have to deal with tge negative attitude when I insist that they check to make sure.
Just like there is awareness on peanuts, forbidden as a snack on flights, awareness about soy should also be required, flight foods contain soy.
Yes ‘I don’t think so’ is not the response you want to hear and should have alarm bells ringing. I wouldn’t risk that. The problem is people think nut allergies are the worst allergies, when in fact people can be allergic to any of the Top 14 allergens UK restaurants need to be aware of. Consider also people allergic to foods outside the Top 14 or the Top 8 in the US. Don’t get me started on ordering food for a flight. It’s impossible if you have multiple allergies so I just take my own food/picnic and woe betide the member of staff trying to confiscate this from me.
OMG, I’ve had to explain to food workers before that “I don’t think so” is not a useful answer. I’ve also met wait staff who, when asked if they have any non-wheat pasta, insist that none of their pasta contains wheat (presumably meaning none of it is whole wheat), I’ve asked about ingredients and been given a “nutrition facts sheet” (which does not list ingredients). Once I asked a food service worker what kind of oil was in their fryer and got the answer “it comes in a really big tub.” Plainly more awareness of food allergies among restaurant workers would be a good thing.
Yes it’s not always the staff’s fault if they have not been trained but I does amaze me that in this day and age where allergy deaths are reported on main stream media that people don’t understand this is serious. Thanks so much for your comment. Hopefully things will improve as enough of us ask the important questions and demand the service we need to stay safe.
It’s not only that. Some of the staff are unbelievably poorly trained//educated. We asked for a jacket potato for hy hubby, who HAS to be dairy-free because of his allergies… we discussed with them that mayonnaise had milk/cream in. They insisted it was dairy-free and went on to tell us that eggs were dairy! milk wasn’t…
YOU have to stand up for yourself. We eat out very rarely now and check every thing carefully, and have simply walked out of restaurants and cafes because they were serving dishes with NUTS in (I have an anaphylactic-level allergy to nuts. The smell of them on others’ food can be enough to make me vomit.)
It doesn’t matter how much you explain to people, some of them will do whatever they can to make their own lives easy, and that can include deliberate lying.
Be well.
I’m so sorry you’ve also had such bad experiences. I think experience teaches you the places to avoid and training or the lack of it is often at the root of all our problems when eating out. Being vocal and speaking up is the only thing you can do so keep doing that. It will all help to raise awareness as if staff we leave of don’t eat they will realise we are serious. Stay safe! Bit nervous of ever eating out again at the moment!
Well, in lockdown we can’t. After, hubby has promised to take me out for a decent meal – but the only restaurant we know of that can and does cope with allergies is not likely to reopen as it’s very small, no room for lots of tables anymore 🙁 We’ll carry on doing what we do, and try not to be nervous about it.
Good luck to you, and look out for yourself!
Where do you live Eve?
North Yorkshire, Scarborough.
Hmmm I don’t know that area… There must be somewhere that can cater though. I find the more expensive restaurants are better. Good luck! Think it’ll be a while till I venture out to eat.