Law let Pret play Russian roulette with our girl’s life
LAST PICTURE ON PLANE MINUTES BEFORE SHE DIED
A HEARTBROKEN family last night demanded that ministers close a deadly legal loophole which allowed Pret A Manger to play ‘Russian roulette’ with a teenage girl’s life.
Natasha Ednan-Laperouse went into fatal shock on a British Airways flight after suffering a severe allergic reaction to a baguette she had bought from the sandwich giant.
The 15-year-old suffered numerous allergies and had checked the artichoke, olive and tapenade baguette for allergen warnings, but found no alerts that the bread contained sesame seeds.
Her grieving father Nadim, who was with her on the flight when she suffered a fatal cardiac arrest, said he believed inadequate food labelling laws were to blame for his daughter’s death. Her inquest heard Pret exploited a loophole meant to help small sandwich shops by leaving ingredients labels off its food, because it was produced on site.
Shockingly, a snap audit by the Mail yesterday found that in seven well-known sandwich chains, none provided specific allergy information on the individual packaging of their sandwiches.
Customers either had to rely on warnings on the display cabinets, or actually ask staff themselves for any relevant allergy information.
Yesterday, Mr Ednan-Laperouse, 53, a millionaire businessman, called for an overhaul of food labelling law to save other lives. Speaking outside the inquest with his wife Tanya, 51, and their son Alex, 15, he said: ‘It feels to us that if Pret A Manger were following the law, then the law was playing Russian roulette with our daughter’s life.
‘It’s clear that the food labelling laws as they stand today are not fit for purpose and it is now time to change the law. Natasha’s inquest should serve as a watershed moment to make meaningful change and to save lives.’
His call received immediate support from politicians, allergy sufferers and food safety campaigners. It came as:
The coroner criticised ‘ inadequate’ food labelling and ruled Natasha died from a ‘ catastrophic’ allergic reaction;
He said ministers should review whether food giants should benefit from a law designed for small shops;
A senior politician attacked the ‘cosy relationship’ between big corporations and licensing bodies;
Pret promised ‘ meaningful change’ in its £1.5billion empire;
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said a review of food labelling laws was underway.
Natasha had suffered an allergy to sesame seeds since she was two years old and she and her family were vigilant about checking food for the seeds and other allergens. Her inquest heard both she and her father checked the Pret baguette but were ‘reassured’ by the lack of any allergy warnings on its packaging.
Pret part-bakes its baguettes and sends them to its High Street shops, where they are baked, filled and packaged. The chain uses stickers on its food display units, but West London coroner Dr Sean Cummings said they were ‘inadequate’. He said the chain had ‘an inconsistent and indeed incoherent system’ for monitoring reports of problems, despite selling around 218million items a year.
The inquest heard there had been nine sesame-related allergy incidents in the year before Natasha died, including four which led to customers seeking hospital treatment.
Her family’s lawyer Jill Paterson, of law firm Leigh Day, said: ‘The law as it stands currently treats multinational companies in the same way as a local sandwich shop. This cannot be right.’ Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said large food companies had failed to show responsibility towards their customers’ welfare.
He said: ‘We need to address the law on food labelling, review the cosy relationship between big corporations and their licensing authorities, and challenge the Food Standards Agency to police rather than simply administer the industry.’
The inquest heard the legal loophole was intended to help small businesses. But yesterday the Mail visited seven sandwich chains, which all assemble their products in their High Street shops. None provided specific information on the individual packaging of their sandwiches. Just three provided specific information about allergens on individual products in the display cabinet: EAT, Crussh and Pret A Manger.
One, Le Pain Quotidien, had no allergen information visible anywhere in store. When our reporter
asked, a member of staff confirmed its baguettes all contained sesame.
Natasha was on her way to a four- day break in Nice with her father and her best friend when she bought the baguette at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 in July 2016. Phone footage onboard the plane showed her smiling and joking just moments before she complained her throat felt itchy, and discovered a rash on her midriff. She used two allergy ‘epipens’ which she carried but begged her desperate father: ‘Daddy, help me, I can’t breathe.’ She suffered a cardiac arrest and died later in a French hospital.
Coroner Dr Cummings offered his condolences to Natasha’s father and said he would write to Pret and the Environment Secretary about the case. He said the sandwich chain had informed its shareholders and board members, but had not carried out any formal investigation of its own. He said: ‘Overall I was left with the impression Pret had not addressed the fact that monitoring food allergy in a business selling more than 200million items a year was something to be taken very seriously indeed.’
Pret chief executive Clive Schlee said: ‘We are deeply sorry for Natasha’s death. All of us want to see meaningful change come from this tragedy. We will make sure that it does.’
YOU would hardly think it, amid all the party infighting over Brexit, but the Tories have a great deal to be proud of since they returned to power in 2010.
Defying all predictions, they’ve pulled the country out of the deepest recession of modern times, presiding over seven years of uninterrupted growth.
On jobs in particular, as Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey will spell out next week, they’ve made Britain the envy of Europe, with unemployment at its lowest since 1975.
Indeed, 3.3million more people are in work today than when Gordon Brown left office eight years ago. That’s 700,000 more than during the entire 13 years of the last Labour government, when the economy appeared to be on a roll before the crash.
Yet today, everything the Tories have achieved is under lethal threat. It comes from the kindergarten economics on display at the Labour Conference in Liverpool this week, where Jeremy Corbyn and his class-warrior allies stepped up their war on job-creating businesses, with policies guaranteed to bring ruin.
But though a YouGov poll shows Labour slipping six points behind, the Tories can’t rely solely on voters’ common sense to keep this Marxist crew from power.
For the uncomfortable fact is that Mr Corbyn’s speech struck many chords with a public deeply concerned about failings in public services, the housing crisis and ripoff bills from rapacious utility companies and train operators.
This is why it is so vital that at their conference next week, the Tories must deliver coherent and distinctively Conservative solutions to the problems facing the country. It will not be enough simply to point to the horrors of the alternative. They need to outline a clear vision that will instil optimism and give voters positive reasons for trusting them.
Above all, they must present a united front, since nothing is more off-putting to voters than an impression of chaos and division.
Which brings us to Boris Johnson’s vainglorious – and uncharacteristically unreadable – 4,500-word attack on Theresa May’s plans for Brexit, in which he set out an alternative of his own.
Yes, this paper shares many of his reservations about the Chequers compromise. But it is simply dishonest of him to suggest it would be a straightforward matter, at this stage in the talks, to tear up the only proposal on the table and substitute sketchy blueprints of his own.
After his self- serving TV interviews, in which he repeatedly refused to rule out a leadership challenge, the Tory faithful should see Mr Johnson’s intervention for what it is: Not a carefully thought-out plan for the future of Britain, but a manifesto for the future of Boris.
Indeed, with the shadow of Mr Corbyn’s Marxism hanging over the country, this is a time for all Tories to rally behind the Prime Minister. And that includes you, Boris. IN
an affront to everything the Tories should stand for, it emerges that because of the rigid cap on tax-free nesteggs, the Treasury milked £660million from pension savings last year – a stratospheric increase on a decade ago. Meanwhile, the Chancellor is said to be considering a further raid on pensions to help balance his books. If he cares at all about the Tories’ claim to be the party of the prudent and self-reliant, he must think again. BOTH
Pret a Manger and British Airways emerge in an appalling light from the harrowing evidence of 15-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse’s death from a sesame- seed allergy aboard a BA flight. Indeed, only our public inquest system comes out of this tragedy with any credit. It is cold comfort to Natasha’s grieving parents, but thanks to open reporting of the coroner’s court, lessons will be learned from her death – and others will be saved.