Pret ‘wrongly accused one of its suppliers over second allergy death’
PRET A Manger was at the centre of another allergy scandal last night as it was accused of making ‘unfounded’ claims about a supplier after a second death.
It emerged yesterday that another customer of the chain had died after eating a sandwich from a store in Bath.
The woman collapsed in December last year after buying a vegan ‘super-veg rainbow flatbread’ costing £3.75 that was apparently contaminated with traces of dairy.
The customer, whose identity is not known, died within hours after suffering a suspected allergic reaction.
News of the case follows the storm of controversy over the death of 15-year- old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died on a British Airways flight from an allergic reaction to a Pret baguette that did not feature any warnings of specific allergens on the label.
Pret A Manger yesterday sought to play down its culpability in the latest case by blaming a dairy-free yoghurt in the flatbread that was ‘mis-sold’ to the chain.
Pret said it was from a batch of vegan-branded CoYo yoghurts that were later pulled from supermarkets after an investigation by the Food Standards Authority (FSA) found they could be contaminated. The chain said it had sacked the company following the recall.
But in an dramatic twist last night, Kent-based CoYo accused Pret of making ‘unfounded’ accusations. It said the yoghurt in the flatbread was not from the batch that had been recalled.
CoYo, whose products are sold by Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, also suggested that the sandwich chain had obstructed its efforts to find out exactly what caused the death.
And it accused Pret A Manger of ‘speculating’ about the death, even suggesting that the sandwich may have been contaminated by the chain’s staff rather than by the yoghurt.
Pret has been embroiled in controversy since the inquest into Natasha’s death, which brought the issue of food allergies into public focus. Yesterday, it emerged that an astonishing 68 products linked to potentially lethal allergies or food intolerances have been recalled this year alone.
Natasha’s family said they were ‘incredibly saddened’ by news of the latest death.
CoYo was launched in 2011 by former Metropolitan Police officers Bethany Eaton, 40, and her husband Paul, 48, who wanted to capitalise on the growing vegan food trend. Its products have been endorsed by celebrity chefs, including Nigella Lawson.
Yesterday it emerged that concerns about the death in Bath had first been raised by a coroner who contacted Bath and North-East Somerset Council on January 19.
The council then informed Pret A Manger, which took the flatbread product off its shelves while tests were conducted by Bath, Westminster and Bexley councils.
After the tests found the dairyfree products it contained had traces of milk protein, the FSA was told about the problem and a national recall notice was issued on February 18, citing a ‘possible health risk’.
The death was not mentioned by the regulator or any of the local authorities involved at the time.
Pret A Manger, which has not been in contact with the victim’s family, said it stopped using CoYo products in February and was in the process of taking legal action against the company.
‘CoYo mis-sold to Pret a guaranteed dairy-free yoghurt that was found to contain dairy protein,’ the company said. ‘This is believed to have resulted in the tragic death of a customer from an allergic reaction in December 2017.’
At the time of the recall, CoYo said it was ‘devastated’ by the discovery and blamed a third-party company that supplied tapioca starch used in the yoghurt.
But last night, the company disputed that the contaminated products were linked to the death in Bath, claiming the yoghurts that were recalled were made with a raw material only supplied to the company in January.
A spokesman said: ‘The claims made by Pret are unfounded.
‘The dairy-free product we provided to Pret in December 2017, at the time of this tragedy, is not linked to the product we recalled in February 2018.
‘Pret’s inability to provide us with a batch code, despite several requests, has severely limited our ability to investigate this further.’