Andy Clarke: Is it fair to besiege Pret over allergens?

Quite understandably, they are pressing for a new “Natasha’s Law” obliging food chains to label all food products with full details of all contents and in particular any allergen ingredients.

This seems a very reasonable demand. But I’m not sure it will entirely deal with what is a problem for a growing, if relatively small, segment of the population – those who literally put their lives at risk when they eat something they haven’t prepared themselves.

That’s because accurate labelling is only one of the challenges facing a food preparation business.

“I have to feel some sympathy with Clive Schlee, the CEO of Pret, when he says ‘Pret may look like a huge company, but in fact it’s 500 small kitchens’”

First, there have to be robust systems to ensure that nothing goes into the sandwich or prepared meal which isn’t on the label. That means eliminating human errors in the prep room, especially taking steps to avoid cross-contamination with other products using the same production line.

Good systems and hygiene practices are a given in any such business. But I have to feel some sympathy with Clive Schlee, the CEO of Pret, when he says “Pret may look like a huge company, but in fact it’s 500 small kitchens”.

The second issue which used to worry me, when I was responsible for managing a business with hundreds of outlets selling sandwiches prepared in-house, is how to be sure that the ingredients you are using are exactly what they are supposed to be.

We had teams of quality controllers checking that our suppliers were delivering the specified quality and content of product, but it’s physically impossible to check every batch of every product sold in every store.

A huge effort

In fairness to Mr Schlee, he hasn’t made these points in the company’s defence but has honestly committed to learning from the tragedy and has said the company would do things better in the future.

But the complexities and difficult nature of the allergen problem are not easily addressed, however sincerely and genuinely meant is the intention. It requires constant attention to the challenge of delivering, day after day, millions of healthy, hygienic and fresh food products in hundreds of locations.

The fact that Pret has been such a remarkable and consistent success story over the past 20 years suggests to me that Mr Schlee and his colleagues have done a pretty good job in that context.

“Labelling and printed warnings on every packet can only, at the end of the day, play one part of the solution to the problem”

We’d probably all agree that they don’t seem to have handled the crisis very well and have felt the lash of the tabloid press as a result.

Let’s keep a sense of proportion. A very tiny number of Pret’s customers have to fear what may be present in a product when it has been properly labelled, thoroughly tested and made under tightly controlled conditions. They deserve that food producers make every effort to protect them from that small possibility of danger.

But labelling and printed warnings on every packet can only, at the end of the day, play one part of the solution to the problem.

They are there to alert those who are aware of their allergen sensitivities to the presence of ingredients which could be problematic. They can never be a total guarantee of safety for everyone who needs to take that level of care about exactly what they eat.

So before we all join in the throwing of brickbats at Pret and Mr Schlee, please take a moment to think about what thousands of manufacturers and retailers of prepared food products are doing on a daily basis to keep us all safe.

Sometimes, unluckily and usually unavoidably, something goes wrong. When it does, believe me, the people who run those businesses do not just shrug it off. They look at what happened, identify anything that has gone wrong or could have been done differently, and they make changes so it won’t happen again.