Former Candy Testers Sue Cadbury For Feeding Them Experimental Sweeteners

By July 9, 2008

Three former candy testers have filed lawsuits against Cadbury for feeding them some sort of experimental sweetener and other products that affected their ability to taste. They say they would like to know what the substances were.

From the Star-Ledger:

“I know they did something bad to us,” said Magliaro, of Denville. “I want to know what they gave me.”

Montville attorney Robyne LaGrotta filed three lawsuits in Superior Court in Morristown against Cadbury and Spherion Atlantic Enterprises LLC, a staffing company that hired the three Morris County women to work at Cadbury’s research facility in East Hanover. The lawsuits became public today.

Cadbury spokeswoman Katharine Beyer said the United Kingdom company, which has its U.S. headquarters in Parsippany, would not comment on pending litigation.

On the second day of testing the mysterious sweetener, one of the testers “developed eight pustules on her tongue and had a reaction under her tongue and along her right lower cheek.” The testers claim they were fired after they started asking questions about the substance and the testing procedures at a staff meeting.

“It’s as if they weren’t taking us seriously,” Zuccarini said. She said she has a chronic metallic taste in her mouth and her tongue burns if she drinks carbonated beverages or tastes mint. “I don’t know when it’s going to stop.”

Tasters file lawsuits against Cadbury [NJ]

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Comments

  1. synergy says:
    July 10, 2008 at 5:40 pm

    Hmph. Just noticed it was here, not the UK. Yeah, they definitely better not have signed any waivers.

  2. thelushie says:
    July 10, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    @synergy: They have to do that here too. Informed consent is taken seriously which is why if they did experiment on them (and did not give informed consent), Cadbury will be paying dearly.

  3. lordargent says:
    July 10, 2008 at 10:14 pm

    jenl1625: Generally, the folks that get taste-testing jobs at places like this are NOT the “OMG, it’s a table full of chocolate – I’m gonna eat till I burst” people. It’s more like a wine tester – you have to have the ability to taste subtle things, and point out underlying tastes that most people might not notice outright (the kind of thing where I might be “I don’t know why, but I’m just not fond of that particular candy”) . . . .

    I doubt they’re supertasters ([en.wikipedia.org]) given the simple fact that they were paid $10 an hour.

    Essentially, I think they were doing the same sort of taste test work that they would have had random people off the street do.

  4. gc3160thtuk says you got your humor in my sarcasm and you say you got your sarcasm in my humor says:
    July 11, 2008 at 4:32 am

    10 bucks an hour? That sucks. I make more than that an hour at Walmart. And my tongue doesn’t have bloody corpuscles on it and I don’t lose the ability to taste when I go home at the end of my workday.

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