Family of burger death teen: Change law to put allergy risk on menus
THE family of a teenager who died after suffering an allergic reaction to a meal at a Byron restaurant demanded a change in the law yesterday.
Owen Carey’s parents Paul and Moira want restaurants to display allergen information next to each dish on their menus.
Owen was celebrating his 18th birthday at the upmarket burger chain when he was served chicken marinated in buttermilk – despite warning staff he had a dairy allergy. He collapsed in his girlfriend’s arms less than an hour later and died in hospital shortly afterwards.
His devastated family spoke out yesterday after a coroner concluded at an inquest into his 2017 death that Owen had told staff about his allergies.
The family, from Crowborough, East Sussex, said: ‘We are calling on the Government to change the law on allergen labelling in restaurants.
‘We want restaurants to have to display clear allergen information on each individual dish on their menus. The food industry should put the safety of their customers first.
‘It is simply not good enough to have a policy which relies on verbal communication between the customer and their server, which often takes place in a busy, noisy restaurant where the turnover of staff is high and many of their customers are very young.
‘This leaves far too much room for error on an issue we know far too well can cost lives. We hope we can bring about change with Owen’s Law for better allergen labelling in restaurants.’
Byron told the Southwark inquest it complied with regulations on allergies at the time. The menu was a two-sided placemat with a message on the back telling customers to inform staff about ingredients they needed to avoid. Owen was visiting London when he went to the Byron restaurant at the O2 Arena in Greenwich.
The inquest heard he ordered a chicken fillet, but the menu failed to mention it was marinated in buttermilk.
Members of the public rushed to help when he collapsed 55 minutes later outside the London Eye. The teenager died at St Thomas’s Hospital.
In a written conclusion, assistant coroner Briony Ballard said Owen ‘died from a severe foodinduced anaphylactic reaction from food eaten and ordered at a restaurant despite making staff aware of his allergies’.
She added: ‘The menu was reassuring in that it made no reference to any marinade or potential allergenic ingredient in the food selected.
‘The deceased was not informed that there were allergens in the order.’ She earlier suggested at the inquest that all restaurant menus should display a red ‘A’ sign next to dishes that contain allergens.
But Aimee Leitner-Hopps, of Byron, said such a system would ‘breed complacency’ as it would appear next to ‘about 95 per cent of dishes’. Thomas Jervis, the Carey family’s lawyer, said after the hearing: ‘The food regulations relating to allergy information are clearly not fit for purpose.’ Byron chief executive Simon Wilkinson said in a statement: ‘We will make it our priority to work with colleagues across the restaurant industry to ensure standards and levels of awareness are improved.’
Miss Ballard is due to outline her recommendations in a prevention of death report at a later date. Owen’s mother Moira said there are ‘hundreds of thousands’ of allergy sufferers who are scared to eat out in restaurants because ‘that is the key place where they are at risk’.
The parents of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, 15, from London, who died in 2016 when she ate a sesame seed baguette from Pret A Manger, yesterday said: ‘Owen’s death yet again highlights the inadequacy of food information in this country.’ Figures show one in 12 children and one in ten adults are allergic to at least one food.
‘Far too much room for error’