Vegetarian who almost ate sample of pâté fails in religious-discrimination claim

A vegetarian who claimed misleading signage led her to pick up a sample of pâté, leaving her “sick to her stomach” over the thought of eating meat, has failed in a claim for religious discrimination.The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has rejected an equality complaint by Vanessa Maria Corral-Fernandez against Sheridan’s Cheesemongers Ltd, the operator of a retail concession where she encountered the meat paste on June 6th, 2025. Corral-Fernandez told the WRC at an online hearing last month she went to a tasting display in the shop because she saw signage mentioning “hummus, pesto and olives”. There were samples of pâté spread on crackers on the table, the WRC was told. READ MOREAfter she picked up a sample from the table, a member of staff told her it was pâté, Corral-Fernandez said. She said she told the worker she was vegetarian and said she had been “deprived” of an “informed choice about the food being offered” because of the wording of the signage. “The signage should have accurately reflected the samples available,” Corral-Fernandez argued. She told the hearing she did not eat the pâté, but said: “The thought that [I] might have consumed meat caused [me] to feel sick to [my] stomach,” the decision noted. In her complaint under the Equal Status Act 1998, Corral-Fernandez had accused the shop operator of religious discrimination. The complainant told the tribunal her “spiritual beliefs [were] aligned with Hinduism and that vegetarianism was the basis of [the] complaint”. David Sheridan, managing director of the respondent company, said the firm denied any discrimination.The signage Corral-Fernandez saw about hummus, pesto and olives was for a different special offer and “not intended to describe the pâté samples”, he said. A worker “intervened before the complainant consumed the sample and expressly informed her that it was pâté”, he said. The complainant only said she was vegetarian after that, and made no mention of religion, he added. Adjudication officer Christian Ryan dismissed the complaint under the Equal Status Act 2000 in a decision published on Monday. She wrote in her decision: “I accept that vegetarianism may, in particular circumstances, form part of a person’s religious or spiritual practice. That fact is not sufficient of itself to establish discrimination.”Ryan wrote that when asked to explain how she suffered discrimination, Corral-Fernandez focused on a “contention” that she had been “deprived of the opportunity to make an informed choice about whether to take the sample”. “The complainant considered the signage to be misleading and was dissatisfied with the response she received when she raised her concerns. However, those matters do not, without more, establish prohibited conduct.”There was no connection established in evidence to the protected ground cited, and no inference of discrimination presented for the respondent to rebut, the adjudicator added, calling the complaint “not well founded”.