Source: Wikipedia
A Facebook user made a post in which he mentioned that he sometimes likes to go into Tesco and switch lasagna food labels. While few found the “joke” funny, most agreed that the action extremely dangerous for people.
First and foremost, it’s not funny to fool people into buying something that they never intended to buy. Consumers expect to be able to trust what they’re buying, rather than being forced to play a guessing game with their purchase.
Second, as many commenters on the post mentioned, the health or even lives of people with food allergies could literally be at risk. One user says, “This is awful, you could kill someone with allergies? My friend is allergic to enzymes in meat. This is genuinely sickening”. If a person with a meat allergy were to be fooled into eating meat due to incorrect labeling, the repercussions could be tragic. Once others are put into harm’s way, a joke is no longer a joke; it’s just wrong.
Arguably, the one good thing to come out of this idiotic ordeal is that many agree that food labels need to be made more secure by their respective companies. As one user put it, “packaging on food should be more secure so it can’t be changed easily incase of allergies”. To be clear, I’m not blaming the companies whatsoever, at least not yet. Who would have guessed a person would do such an idiotic thing? In all honestly, the thought of how easily the labels could be switched never even crossed my mind up until this point. However, if, after such an incident has occurred, the companies simply shrug and continue to use these ‘loose labels,’ then I would wag my finger and hold them fully responsible. These companies have a chance to eliminate such an incident from ever happening again. Let’s hope they take it.
