Download 2024: food poisoning among the public.
There was no shortage of problems in this year’s edition of Download Festival, a Metal and rock event which took place last weekend, from 14 to 16 June at Donington Park (the racetrack/motodrome in the center of England), and featured as headliners Queens Of The Stone Age, fall out Boy And avenged sevenfold.
It has in fact been confirmed that the food stands of the festival Downloads 2024 they were closed because a significant number of spectators fell ill with food poisoning.
During the course of the event, numerous attendees began reporting symptoms of food poisoning, including nausea, stomach cramps, fever and general malaise. According to what FoodPoisoningNews writes, taking up the report of a medical tent present on site, as many as 500 people were affected by what they described as a “real epidemic of food poisoning”.
Speaking to BBC News, a spokesperson for the North West Leicestershire District Council (NWLDC) said doctors began noticing “a pattern” in fans falling ill, prompting the event organizer Live Nation to launch an investigation.
Live Nation said customer safety was its “primary concern” and confirmed that all food vendors were inspected before and during the event. The organizer added that two vendors “were closed and removed from the site because they did not meet Environment Health and local authority standards”.
Among the people who reported an illness were the artists who performed at the event, including Sean Smith – frontman of The Raiders – who revealed he was hospitalized after the event and was put on an IV drip due to food poisoning.
The National Health Service (NHS) lists common symptoms of food poisoning as nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, stomach cramps, high fever and feeling generally unwell, including tiredness, aches and chills. These symptoms typically arise after consuming contaminated foods that have been cooked, stored, or handled improperly.
Local authorities said: “We carried out continuous food hygiene safety checks on site throughout the five-day festival to ensure all vendors were in line with the required standards.
“Where we find improvements need to be made, we provide advice and carry out a return visit to ensure improvements have been made. We worked with the event organizer to investigate two food vendors, both of which were closed by the event organiser event over the weekend.”
The food poisoning issue was just one of many to plague the 2024 edition of the festival, with organizers finding themselves in difficulty during the three days due to extreme weather conditions.
During the event, heavy storms hit the Donington Park site, turning the space into a sea of mud – so much so that even the Panther they referenced the muddy fields in a tweet showing a snippet of their set: “We had a lot of fun today at Download! Here’s a taste of our performance. Hope you had fun in the mud.”
Additionally, several bands dropped out of this year’s edition due to the festival’s previous links to Barclays and the bank’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
THE Pest Control they were the first band to withdraw from the festival, stating that they would not “take part in an event whose sponsor profits from the facilitation of a genocide”. Scowl, Speed And Zulu they have boycotted the festival later, as well as the Enter Shikari.
The number of boycotts has led Barclays to withdraw from a number of festivals, including Download, Latitude and Isle Of Wight (read here)
