A teenager who died after unwittingly eating buttermilk at popular UK burger chain Byron had told staff he was allergic to dairy products, a coroner has found.
Owen Carey went into anaphylactic shock after eating a grilled chicken burger at the Byron restaurant at the O2 Arena in London's Greenwich on his eighteenth birthday, The BBC reported.
Carey, from Crowborough in East Sussex, felt his lips tingling and experienced stomach problems after eating half the burger, which an inquest found had been coated in buttermilk but continued on to the London Aquarium in Waterloo with his girlfriend as planned.
Just metres from the aquarium, Carey collapsed in his girlfriend's arms. Members of the public, including a RAF doctor, tried to revive him but when paramedics arrived, he was "not breathing and pulseless", a hearing at Southwark Coroner's Court was told.
Carey died at nearby St Thomas' Hospital 45 minutes later.
A coroner ruled that the restaurant's menu had misled Carey into thinking the burger was safe to eat by failing to mention it contained buttermilk.
Assistant coroner Briony Ballard described Carey death, which occurred on April 22, 2017, as a tragedy, The Guardian reported.
"The deceased made serving staff aware of his allergies," she told the court. "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. The food served to and consumed by the deceased contained dairy which caused the deceased to suffer a severe anaphylactic reaction from which he died."
Ballard said restaurant menus should include a distinct warning, such as a "red A", next to all items containing potential allergens to avoid future deaths, The Times reported.
Carey's family has also called for clearer labelling on restaurant menus, with his sister Emma Kocher saying outside the court that his death should not have happened, the BBC report stated.
"It's 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," she said.
Byron chief executive Simon Wilkinson said after the hearing that the company takes allergies "extremely seriously" and has "robust procedures in place" to prevent people from being served meals containing foods they are allergic to.
However, he added that it is clear the industry needs to do more to help those with allergies and raise awareness of the risk of allergies.
In New Zealand, packaged foods must state on the label whether they contains peanuts, tree nuts, milk, sesame seeds, fish, crustacea, soy, lupin or wheat — the nine most common allergens.
If the food is not packaged — for example sold fresh in a bakery, deli or cafe — the information must be displayed next to the food or provided to the customer if they ask.
About 10 per cent of infants, four to eight per cent of children and two per cent of adults suffer from food allergies in Australia and New Zealand, according to the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA).
