Over the last month, a series of accidents in the food industry could have been fatal.  One happened locally at Dickie’s Barbeque Pit in South Jordan on Aug. 13.

Jan Harding and her husband were having lunch when she took a sip of her sweet tea and immediately felt her mouth and throat burning.

She spit the beverage out as quickly as she could before telling her husband that “It felt like she was drinking acid.”

After Harding’s husband rushed her to the hospital they discovered that the 64-year-old woman had deep burns covering her esophagus and would need surgery, because the toxic industrial cleaning chemical, lye, was mixed into her tea.

A similar accident happened in a Colorado Dairy Queen a few weeks later. Lisa Chase bought her son Riley a shake and after he said, “It tasted gross,” she took a sip and realized that her son was right, and that it “tasted like a strong cleanser.”

While this instance isn’t as severe as the prior one, the fact that it recurred is a large problem.

Those who work in the food industry are expected to take a food handler permit test, which carefully and clearly states how important it is to keep cleaning substances away from any food that you may serve to a customer.

Dickies’ has taken charge and released a statement reassuring us that this was an isolated issue to the South Jordan location, and that they have taken the incident very seriously.

As for the Dairy Queen, they said that their incident was isolated as well, and that their staff will undergo new training.