100,000miler

Earlier this week, specifically on Nov 15, did anyone else buy the on board tuna salad and get food poisoning??? I did and was violently ill for several days. still jittery.

What does one do about such a situation. In my case it ruined my meetings and plans for several days not to mention a flight, hotel room, etc.

bounty

Ruined a hotel room???

sorry

Wingnut

Absolutely nothing you can do unless you can prove it was the tuna salad, and, unless you've kept a refrigerated sample of said salad, you can't (although if a large number of people reply to this thread having had similar symptoms after eating the same item on the same day you might get somewhere).

IMHO there's no point even complaining as I doubt they'd even give a DC Gold member a token apology as a gesture of goodwill (eg free miles) as that could be taken as an admission of fault which, given there might be someone somewhere a lot sicker than you, would be a bad move on their part.

Out of interest what else had you eaten in the 24 (or even 48) hours before your symptoms set in? And how scrupulous are you about personal hygiene (that's not meant to be a dig - I know that I can take a casual approach to handwashing and cleaning under my nails etc...).

spd

Another advantage of modularisation. If they still had free food and the tuna salad was off, they would have a lot more complaints, and therefore a case against them!!!

Seriously though, did you look at the use by date on the salad? I assume that if proper storage and rotation procedures aren't being strictly applied, it might be easy for out of date food to be served to a passenger.

Is the food on the trolley refrigerated? If not, I assume taking it out of refrigeration and wheeling up a plane on an unrefrigerated trolley several times a day mightn't do a lot for its shelf life!

Sean

The _Banking_Scot

Hi,

Although as other posters have said, it would be very difficult to prove that the Tuna Salad was the cause, it might be worthwhile writing in ( they might have recieved other complaints) but I would not hold out much hope for any compensation.

Regards

TBS

colmc

Actually, this happened on my last LHR - DUB flight. Someone purchased a Tuna salad which had expired, and had to send it back. I remember hearing the cabin crew member telling her colleague about it. It put me off buying any of the short-shelf life foods from the buy-on-board selection, that's for sure.

Alas, like the others, unless you have something to provie it with, I'm not sure if you'll get anywhere with BD.

Aisle Seat H

The new BD in a nutshell - you have to pay for food, and when you do they poison you with it !

Seriously, and this is of course very serious 100,000miler, I (personally) would certainly follow this up quite strongly if I were you, despite advise to the contrary here, espec. if you were indeed put in serious distress for some days due to their food.

If you are sure it was this that made you so ill (i.e. it could not have been anything else) then I would certainly get in touch with someone very senior in BD, and also make the relevent authority (no, I have no idea who that might be) aware of the incident - not in a 'gimme cash' kind of way, but in a 'I am sure you are as concerned as I am that one of your passengers was poisoned by your food' way.

If, as it seems from colmc's post, this has happened before you may be adding to something they already know. And even if it does not it is something they should know of, and is something they will take seriously for obvious reasons, and due to the future implications if it were to emerge they did nothiing about your complaint and then it happened again.

As for proof etc if BD are not helpful/refuse to compensate you etc, and you do want to take this further to get the compensation it sounds like you deserve/need for the costs etc incurred, consult a lawyer : I am not one, and have no idea if other posters before me in this Thread are, but I do know that things like food poisoning can be 'proven' by other things than keeping leftovers of the meal, indeed they often are. How many people have been given food poisoning by a restaurant only to become aware of it sometime later, when all the food has been disposed of etc, and still were able to claim against the establishment.

To give a pertinent example, my Dad was given very serious food poisoning by food/a meal on a flight many years ago (on UA ? Certainly a USA carrier [Its 1am so I won't call and ask him !]). He became violently ill, about 2 hours after the flight, some 3 hours after the meal, and actually needed to be hospitalised for a few days. He received significant compensation (via a lawyer and the threat of court action) despite him not having kept any of the food, having no idea whether any other pax had been affected, and having little or no way of finding out as he did not know any of them. The hospital's tests could not even 'prove' what exact food was responsible, but it was so clear from the facts/timeline etc that he could only have been poisoned by the final meal of the flight that the airline settled the second the threat of legal action was raised.

If, like he, you have any evidence/witnesses to show that this was the only meal you ate that could be responsible (i.e. all you had eaten before that tuna thing that day was a pack of crisps and a mars bar, or that you had had another earlier meal with other people without any of them getting sick) then I suspect you may have more than enough for a case. And if this 'relevent authority' have heard of similar cases recently, then you have strong back-up. Finding other pax affected, like colmc, either on the exact flight or by the same food item a few days either side, would also help a lot.

P.S. - If this was a packaged meal (maybe even if it was not), the action may have to be against the company who made the meal alone, or against them and BD together.

MrClean06

It is a misconception that you get food poisoning within a day of eating spoiled food. Food poisoning is a bacterial infection and the bacteria must have time to grow, to make you sick. As far as taking action with the airline, good luck proving it. They may try to settle just to cut their losses, but I doubt it.

100,000miler

I am 99.9% certain it was the tuna salad which had a date printed on it of Nov 15th, the evening I was flying. I do not know if this date was the "best before" date (which generally means the food is good for a short while after) or if it was the "packaging date". I recall it being chilled. But as others have said it could have been rolled around in non refridgerated conditions for days, who knows.

The only other food I had was a light lunch with others about 5 hours earlier and no one else had any problems. It was the Tuna, unless it was the canned Pepsi which I also bought (1 GPB) and I have the receipt as I had a great chat with the crew over the conversion of the Euro and they will recall this as we talked afterwards in the galley about a lot of things.

As for the lenght of time needed to be sick, I cannot agree with what the previous person has written. We have all had experiences when eating something off, and within a few hours if not immediately you hurle it up and out---hopefully soon to get rid of it. In my case it was about 3 or 4 hours after consuming it. Then I had severe diarrhea for the next 36 hours. Thank God for Immodium!

If any other pax ate Tuna Salad on BD on Nov 15th, please step forward, if you are still alive!!!

I do not intend to let this incident go without reporting it. As for compensation that is another matter but I feel there is justification. I will consider my options. The principle issue here is purchasing food in good faith and the care and handling that BD has taken of its products.

Dino2020

..........

Aisle Seat H

So my Dad getting violent stomach cramps, needing hospital by the end of the day etc, etc, and the medical experts saying this was due to food he ate, was due to what then ?!? He may only have, in official medical terms, developed the food poisoning a day or two later, but I think this technical distinction would not have made him feel much better ! The pain was very real, as was the seriousness of his condition for a couple of days - the food poisoned him, whether in the first hours a Doc would diagnose it as 'food poisoning' or not.

Sounds like Dino, and our OP who is still not fully recovered, have been unlucky to experience this quick food=induced poisoning pretty quickly too. Not fun, at all, I'm sure.

Aisle Seat H

The Medical Encyclopedia of the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health states :-

"Definition - Food poisoning is the result of eating organisms or toxins in contaminated food. Most cases of food poisoning are from common bacteria like Staphylococcus or E. coli." (I.e. its not just caused by "bacterial infection... [that] must have time to grow" MrClean06)

And it further adds that : "The symptoms from the most common types of food poisoning generally start within 2 to 6 hours of eating the food responsible. That time may be longer (even a number of days) or shorter, depending on the toxin or organism responsible for the food poisoning".

So you will be glad to hear 100,000miler that your experience is quite normal for text book (well, Medical Encyclopedia anyway) food poisoning !!!

Alinlondon

I have photos of a Chicken sandwich (shot on 11/11,for airlinemeals.net) it says 'Use by' and 'Keep refrigerated' on the date strip.

larsll

Does anyone know what the current food-handling regime in a modularized world is?

Earlier; when everyone got served food onboard they would deplete their stores in one flight, and naturally re-stock once on the ground. Now that they sell these things; do they stock the plane full, and keep the food on-board until it is sold out? (Up and down the aisle multiple times over the course of a day...) Or do they still re-stock completely after each flight?

Jenbel

The other thing you could do is to report it to the environmental health officer of the local council for the airport you departed from - food poisoning can be as a result of poor sanitary conditions at the preparation point, they would be better suited to investigate that...