Posted By Rob Randall
Hi Tony,

a food allergy is an illness and not an accident, cannot be said to have been caused by any occupational situation and is therefore not reportable under RIDDOR.

A person who has a food allergy will be aware of the things that he or she cannot eat and it is therefore their own responsibility to ask what the food contains and to avoid the foods that cause the problem.

As a salicylate allergy sufferer myself I am very well aware of the problem.

The only conceivable way in which a restaurant could be implicated would be if the customer made them aware of the allergy and, in spite of that, they put the harmful ingredient into the food and served it to the customer. That would give grounds for a Civil action for damages and possible criminal charges of administering a noxious sustance, i.e. poisoning. This would however be a common law charge and entirely unrelated to the HASAW Act.