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Restaurant owner found guilty of death by chicken tikka masala
New York Post ^ | May 23, 2016 | Sophia Rosenbaum

Posted on 05/23/2016 6:23:23 PM PDT by EveningStar

The owner of an Indian restaurant was found guilty Monday of killing one of his customers — after he cut corners whipping up an order of chicken tikka masala.

A jury in Teesside Crown Court in North Yorkshire, England, found 52-year-old Mohammed Zaman guilty of manslaughter and gross negligence because he switched out almond powder for a cheaper ground nut mix containing peanuts, according to the BBC.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Chit/Chat; Food; Health/Medicine; Society
KEYWORDS: anaphylacticshock; chickentikkamasala; curry; england; food; foodallergy; foodpoisoning; indiancuisine; indianfood; manslaughter; peanut; peanuts; uk; unitedkingdom
BBC News article: Peanut curry death: Restaurant owner Mohammed Zaman jailed
1 posted on 05/23/2016 6:23:23 PM PDT by EveningStar
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To: EveningStar

"Never kill a customer."

2 posted on 05/23/2016 6:24:43 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: EveningStar

Fair verdict.


3 posted on 05/23/2016 6:30:43 PM PDT by Slings and Arrows (My music: http://hopalongginsberg.com/ | Facebook: Hopalong Ginsberg)
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To: EveningStar

Sad but how does someone with such a strong allergy not have an Epi pen every time they eat food someone else prepared?

If not this, a single peanut crumb falling from a cook’s apron could have killed him one day.


4 posted on 05/23/2016 6:50:15 PM PDT by varyouga
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To: Slings and Arrows
Fair verdict.

I guess it would be if the cook or the servers or the driver or, you know, someone actually involved in taking, preparing and delivering this order was convicted. Or how about the restaurant's manager who places the orders for food stocks?

Convicting the owner of six restaurants over the supposed switching to ground nuts rather than ground almonds? I would have challenged that from the start - prosecutors can specify the wholesale supplier to get the ground almonds from and then lab test them, I guarantee that it will come back with peanut proteins.

What insanity. Coming to an American courtroom soon...

5 posted on 05/23/2016 6:58:08 PM PDT by kingu (Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)
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To: EveningStar

More like suicide by eating out.


6 posted on 05/23/2016 7:12:15 PM PDT by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken! - voted Trump 2016 & Dude, Cruz ain't bona fide)
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To: varyouga

Aren’t all nuts processed in the same areas of the factory?


7 posted on 05/23/2016 7:37:28 PM PDT by dhs12345
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To: higgmeister

A haiku:

That wasn’t chicken
Nor was it a mammal
You round eyes naive!


8 posted on 05/23/2016 8:14:36 PM PDT by T-Bone Texan (Don't be a lone wolf. Form up small leaderlesss cells ASAP !)
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To: varyouga
Sad but how does someone with such a strong allergy not have an Epi pen every time they eat food someone else prepared? If not this, a single peanut crumb falling from a cook’s apron could have killed him one day.

Agree. The degree of self-protective responsibility should rise with the level of known risk. This decedent should have always had an epipen at table with him when he ate any uncertified food. In fact, he was at the level where eating any restaurant food should have been banned. Way, way too dangerous. And that level of liability certainly should not have been passed on in full to the restaurant owner.

9 posted on 05/23/2016 8:15:00 PM PDT by Talisker (One who commands, must obey.)
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To: dhs12345

Aren’t all nuts processed in the same areas of the factory?


There is even a disclaimer to that effect on a can of mixed nuts without peanuts saying, “may contain peanuts”.

The nut company doesn’t need a lawsuit from some nut who expires eating a rouge peanut in a can of mixed nuts.


10 posted on 05/23/2016 8:16:28 PM PDT by Flick Lives (One should not attend even the end of the world without a good breakfast. -- Heinlein)
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To: Flick Lives

First of all, Indian cuisine doesn’t use peanuts at all, so it would be fair for a customer to assume that a classic Indian restaurant wouldn’t have them on site. We lived in India and Nepal for four years and getting peanut butter was a challenge. Therefore, it was highly unusual for an Indian chef to make the switch to the cheaper peanut powder - especially since in the food industry it is well known how dangerous peanuts can be to some people. Making the switch without disclosure is, I think, an act of gross negligence - not to mention extremely poor Indian cooking. Secondly, the almonds used in this dish would not be processed. They are raw nuts taken right out of the shells.


11 posted on 05/24/2016 4:43:18 AM PDT by Madam Theophilus (iI)
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To: T-Bone Texan

The second line has only six syllables.


12 posted on 05/24/2016 5:14:57 AM PDT by Tax-chick ("We like us the way we are. That makes us real, true friends." ~ The Undead Thread)
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To: Flick Lives

And peanuts can be in foods that you wouldn’t expect to have them — processed cereals, etc. The equipment to process and bag the peanuts is also used for other products.

If a person has a peanut allergy, then they would know this fact. BTW, no I don’t have a peanut allergy.


13 posted on 05/24/2016 7:24:21 AM PDT by dhs12345
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To: varyouga

Epi pens only buy time to get to a hospital. As someone who does have an allergy, I had a close call because of traffic delaying the rush to the ER.

This guy deserved his sentence as he was willfully negligent.


14 posted on 05/24/2016 7:57:37 AM PDT by Shadow44
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To: Shadow44

“This guy deserved his sentence as he was willfully negligent.”

Not denying that in this case. BUT it’s equally negligent/risky to eat commercially made food if you are that intensely allergic.

Even if nobody intentionally adds nuts, a tiny crumb would have eventually found its way into his food and killed him. Or staff can make a mistake, or something can be mislabeled, etc, etc, etc. Even in restaurants that don’t use nuts, a worker can bring in a crumb from home.

Restaurants are not sterile ‘clean rooms’ and eating out with such an allergy is a deadly risk. You are putting your life in the hands of tired minimum wage workers


15 posted on 05/24/2016 8:12:33 AM PDT by varyouga
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To: kingu
According to a BBC news article, the restaurant owner had a similar case only a few weeks before this man died where the affected customer had suffered anaphylactic shock after ordering a "nut free" meal from one of his places but had survived.

An investigation was conducted and he was officially warned that he must take steps to guarantee all his "nut free" meals really were nut free. (He had recently changed all his restaurants over from safe almond powder to a peanut based product to save money.) He did not do as requested and someone subsequently died after eating a meal which had "nut free" written on its packaging.

16 posted on 05/25/2016 6:15:42 PM PDT by Go_Trump_2016
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