Peanut Allergy - alert

Must confess, I always thought it was Pine Nuts in pesto… but the Barilla jar in my cupboard clearly says “noix de cajou”…

Should be pine nuts (garlic basil pecorino parmesan olive oil) but maybe they put cashews in because no pibe nuts, or they are cheaper or something like that. I make mine with loose pine nuts (reminds me of happy hours spent cracking them with a stone when I was little!).

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I suspect that they use the same machines to process a variety of nuts and that the concern is about residual contamination. Hence the phrase “traces of”…
I read of a girl who ate a Pret a porter sandwich recently and died horribly quickly on the street because she hadn’t an EpiPen. Terribly sad.
I should add that her mother did rush into a pharmacy and ask for an EpiPen but the pharmacist wouldn’t dispense it because she had no prescription. The pharmacist was, disgracefully, cleared of any wrong doing.

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Hi John…

How recent was this??

It does sound very bad/odd to me… in an emergency situation one would hope that help would be given willingly…

Mmm… I shall be interrogating my pharmacist when I go in for my next prescription… :zipper_mouth_face: that should get his New Year off to a fine start… :rofl: :rofl:

How does one know one has an allergy to peanuts/nuts/whatever… can this come about “just like that” …???

Quite so… and I hvae no problem with that… better safe than sorry.

And this is why I cannot understand why the “offending” factory did NOT have the labels so marked… unless someone changed the recipe… ooops… or someone made a mistake at the Print Shop… ooops.

Other papers may have dramatised the event by including a pharmacist to blame but the Guardian doesn’t have that twist to the tragic story.

There are extensive GP referral allergy tests available and some “do it yourself” kits too. More “freak yourself out” kits IMO, I’d only trust the professionals.

The original incident happened around four years ago. Had it happened in France I have no doubt the pharmacist would have been prosecuted under the “not rendering assistance to someone in danger” laws. But under UK and Irish law he got off and didn’t even incur professional sanction. A travesty. Had it been a relation of mine I would have pursued him for punitive damages through the civil courts. Bankruptcy’s too good for him.

I suspect it’s all down to operator error or inadequate cleaning. The folk operating the machines would require adequate supervision too.

cheers John…

I’m still going to interrogate my pharmacist… known him (and his staff) for years and we get on well… we always end up laughing, no matter how serious the subject matter might have been… :relaxed: :relaxed:

“inadequate cleaning”… my, that rings a huge bell. I know of one Departmental Manager who sought to meet his Department’s Budget by cutting back on the cleaning schedules. He left the day-time schedules alone, but stopped the overnight deep-cleaning… ooops… big mistake.

Thankfully, the onsite laboratory bods were doing their jobs correctly - testing everything regularly (several times a day) to ensure purity/safety. They “sounded the alarm” when they discovered irregularities in the product (albeit minute quantities). Their investigations ensured that no contaminated/unsafe products left the factory.

Phew…

A variation on food prep cleanliness.
Our daughters both worked seasonally between University terms at a local children’s entertainment centre. It was very popular with fast food eating. The food served also offered veggie burgers and often customers would enquire if they were cooked separately. Yes was the reply as instructed by the management but of course they were happily sizzling away out of sight alongside the meat burgers.:rofl::rofl:

A factor in the peanuts in pesto ingredients might just be that peanuts are cheaper. The business models of many processed foods (fruit ‘drinks’, breakfast ‘cereals’, etc) amounts in essence to removing expensive ingredients, often along with most of the natural goodness, and replacing them with cheaper things (water, sugar, chemicals).

The “costly” deep cleaning of food production machinery could well be a thing of the past in the UK. Corbyn’s comment in the House about the US regulators having defined the acceptable levels of rat hairs in paprika and maggots in orange juice was as illuminating as chlorine chicken and hormone beef.

I read that there’s more nutrition in the the cardboard box of cornflakes than in the contents :face_vomiting:

When I worked in schools the rules on Epipens were very straightforward. Whenever a student who needed an Epipen arrived all of the staff would be informed then go through a practical training session. The parents were asked to provide a clearly marked Epipen which would be stored in the school office. The basic rule for use, the one that came from the medics was that the pen must only be used on the named student. In the event of a crisis we were told that we must not use one person’s pen on another student even if if the second pupil was on the list of Epipen users. This ruling always started discussions but luckily, in my time, nobody was faced by that difficult situation. In fact the Epipens were never used. With certain students their allergies were so dangerous that all of the parents were sent detailed instructions about what was not allowed to be brought into school as a break time snack or as part of a pack lunch.

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I have always found it ludicrous that epipens should be locked away in an office somewhere - if someone is allergic enough to need an epipen then they should have it with them at all times, like a ventolin etc inhaler.

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The Epipens were not locked away anywhere, they were readily available in a central position. When the student left the premises, for example on a visit, the pen went with them. For the school is was much easier to know that the Epipens were on site as well.
Very few systems are 100% perfect but this one worked very well.

I think it was a great idea that the School had an Epipen for each pupil who needed it… but I agree with Vero… that a person who might need it, should carry it with them at all times. A good habit to get into… :hugs:

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I agree with Stella and Vero. The pen should be with the person at all times. Not least because they are the ones who know how to use it. A man in one of our local villages lost his life following a wasp sting whilst preparing for a fete. By the time they found and got his epipen to him it was too late.