A 23-year-old American woman who was particularly cautious in her choice of restaurant due to a severe peanut allergy may have died after the establishment changed the recipe for her favorite dish without warning, according to her parents.
“She would repeatedly go to the same restaurants and order the same dishes, you know. And it was a common thing. (But this time) she took a few bites and realized something was wrong,” her father, Grover Pickering, told CBS News on Tuesday.
More than a year after the death of his daughter Alison Grace Pickering, the man and his partner, Joy, undertook an awareness mission towards catering establishments, in order to make them aware of the seriousness of the food allergies.
That day, the young woman who was about to graduate from Tarleton State University in Texas, chose a restaurant she knew well for a first date.
Except that, in the dish she had already eaten in the past, a mahi-mahi dish, the recipe would have changed and now contained a peanut sauce.
According to her parents, not only would the young woman not have been informed of the change which was “not disclosed on the menu”, we can read in her obituary, but even the staff would not have been informed , according to the American media.
Realizing something was wrong, she rushed to grab her Epipen while waiting for the ambulance, to no avail. The young woman suffered from severe anaphylactic shock and never opened her eyes afterwards.
“It’s tragic and it shouldn’t happen to anyone else,” his father told CBS News.
Today, they are campaigning for better communication of ingredients, like the labels affixed to items in supermarkets, in addition to ongoing training for staff, they told the American media.
“We want to see more measures to raise awareness among servers and customers,” said Joy Pickering, who wants to work with the Texas Restaurant Association to determine “guidelines” to put in place for this purpose. .
Last year, the state passed the Sergio Lopez Food Allergy Awareness Act to improve training and communication among restaurant kitchen workers, according to CBS News.
