Waitrose has apologised to customers after selling vegetable spring rolls which contained both duck meat and undeclared sesame. The company has warned that the products should not have been eaten.

Only this week, the UK’s premier supermarket chain began actively recalling veggie spring rolls that it sold in early January of this year for being “incorrectly packed”.

The supermarket first notified the public via the Trading Standards website on 3 January just three days until the use by date (6 January) of the impacted products.

Printed warnings about the spring rolls have since sprung up in Waitrose stores across the UK warning “if you have a sesame allergy or are avoiding the consumption of meat, do not consume.”

Packaging meat into a vegetable product is highly embarrassing; however, a product containing undeclared sesame, which is one of the 14 allergens that consumers must be made aware of when it is used as an ingredient in food products (according to EU rules), is rather more dangerous.

In September 2018, a coroner in the case of a girl who died after eating a baguette, containing undeclared sesame, created national headlines after he said Pret’s food labels were inadequate. The girl was allergic to sesame and sadly died of cardiac arrest on a flight from Heathrow in 2016.

When asked what had been done to warn customers, a Waitrose spokesperson said the supermarket had communicated through a number of channels including “notices in branches, customer information notices on Waitrose.com, emails out to myWaitrose customers and communication to the FSA.”

Waitrose also confirmed it does not know how many packets of the spring rolls have been returned to stores.

If you think you’ve been affected, you can call a free hotline on 0800 188 884.

Feel free to contact should you wish to see evidence supporting statements above.