Food poisoning

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Am currently sat in Lincoln hospital with dh who has severe food poisoning. We ate out at a Harvester last night and the hosp is convinced this is what gsve him the poisoning. Should I raise this as a formal complaint to the restaurant or the food standards agency?

I think it's environmental health at the council you'll want to complain to.

Handy Which? guide on what to do.

www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/i-got-food-poisoning-while-eating-out-can-i-get-my-money-back

Oops!

Call environmental health. Personally I'd also call Mitchell & Butler head office who will likely get an investigation started (I've done a few).

I do think it's a bit for the hospital to 'be convinced' it was Harvester though, unless they've had an influx of harvester customers?
Dependent on the diagnosis 12h is a fairly quick onset for several types of food poisoning.

Anyway, thats irrelevant - I hope your DH has a quick recovery.

Slightly off-topic, I know, but why have you posted this thread four times?

Oh god as hospital internet is crap. Sorry mumsnet can you remove the other 3?

If its food poisoning you will have to send of a poo sample for testing and they will confirm what it is you have eaten and given your husband food poisoning, its not normally something you have recently eaten as it can take two weeks for the bug to pass through your system. I had food poisoning about 10 years ago and I had to do a food diary of all the food going back about two weeks prior to the point of being ill.

I am sorry that your dh is sick, what did he eat?

My DH had food poisoning and we tracked it back about a week and the hospital think they found the culprit - but that was only because 3 people where ill with the same thing.

Environmental health would go in and look at the kitchen and procedures.

What did he eat ?

The first thing you should do, as in any complaint of any nature, is report it to the place where you think it occurred, ie the Harvester. They will have (by law) a food safety system in place and it will mean they need to investigate what you ate and other instances of complaints. If you feel they are not dealing with it properly, then report it to an EHO.
FYI it is a common misconception to assume that food poisoning has occurred from one of the last things you ate. Sometimes this IS the case but often not as depending on the cause it can take days or weeks to materialise.
No need to go in all guns blazing.

How can the hospital be convicted it was the harvester?

I work in Environmental Health and we would only investigate if you have a confirmed faecal sample, there are two or more of you ill or it was a premises we were concerned about. 12 hours onset time is very quick to be good based and much more likely to be viral. I would report to your local EH dept then then will receive the faecal sample if one has been done.

Food based not good based!

I am really surprised at this thread I've had food poisoning 3 or 4 times, all within 4 hours of eating. One within 30 minutes, horrible diarrhoea. Pretty much every time been shell fish

The quickest incubation for food poisoning is 4 hours, from Bacillus cereus in rice, that causes vomiting. You can't get diarrhea within 30 minutes.

Is that a fact bob or opinion? (Not being at all snarky, genuinely interested)

It's totally possible I was eating rice with the shellfish and just didn't think it could be that

I had food poisoning from ham at an event. Took about 6-8 hours. Lots of us involved.
On the reporting side DH got the environmental health people in after he was ill following a takeaway. They were very good about it all.

Well, I was going by what i often hear at work- I'm a dietitian who happens to cover an infectious diseases ward. However, this www.foodborneillness.com/incubation-ranges.pdf suggests that bacillus cereus may take as little as 1/2 hour (to produce vomiting, diarrhoea takes longer). From what I've gleaned from ward rounds etc though 12- 24 hours is more typical for the main food borne infections eg salmonella, campylobacter.

sadly depending on the strain of food posioning (there are hunderds of thousands of them) they can take between 4 - 72 hours to occur sometimes longer, shell fish and rice based ones are normally the quickest occuring ones but quite rare.

I think the most commen one takes around 24 hours (saminola i think) but i am rusty been awhile since i studied food posioning.

I had food poisoning from fried rice. It took 48 hours to get a grip of me. Confirmed via a stool sample and the hospital informed EH. This was over a decade ago.

Samples were taken from the restaurant and they were slammed with an order to clean up their act or be closed down permanently.

My understanding is, I might be wrong, that food outlets are to keep frozen samples in the event of a food poisoning claim so samples can be removed for testing.