A NSW coroner has ruled that a 16-year-old boy who collapsed and died during a camping trip on the Central Coast in 2022 was killed by an allergic reaction to red meat, a condition he had developed as a result of repeated tick bites over many years. Jeremy Webb is the first Australian confirmed to have died from tick-induced mammalian meat allergy, and only the second such case recorded anywhere in the world.
NSW Deputy State Coroner Carmel Forbes delivered her findings following an inquest held at Lidcombe Coroner's Court, according to 9News. Jeremy had eaten beef sausages with three friends while camping on the night of June 10, 2022, when he began struggling to breathe. His friends attempted to revive him after he collapsed. He was pronounced dead after midnight at Gosford Hospital. His death was initially attributed to asthma.
Coroner Forbes was clear about the sequence of events. "The experts appear to agree that an acute exacerbation of asthma was the immediate cause of Jeremy's death and that the evidence is consistent that that acute exacerbation occurred because of a severe allergic reaction to mammalian meat," she said in her findings. "Without the anaphylaxis caused by the allergy Jeremy's asthma would not have caused his death."
Clinical immunologist Professor Sheryl van Nunen, who subsequently diagnosed Jeremy with mammalian meat allergy after reviewing his case, told the ABC that his death represents the first documented fatality from the condition in Australia. The only other known fatal case involved a 47-year-old man from New Jersey in the United States.
Van Nunen, who has diagnosed and managed more than 800 patients with the condition over two decades, explained to the coroner's court how the allergy develops. A tick injects an allergen into the body, which triggers the production of alpha-gal antibodies. Those antibodies sensitise the immune system to a molecule called alpha-gal, which is present in most mammals including cattle, pigs, sheep and kangaroos. The reaction can be delayed and is easily confused with other conditions, which creates real diagnostic challenges for treating clinicians.
In Australia, the condition is almost exclusively caused by bites from the eastern paralysis tick, a species endemic to the coastal regions of eastern Australia. Jeremy's family had moved to a large, bush-surrounded property on the NSW Central Coast when he was approximately five years old, and he had sustained multiple tick bites over the years that followed.
His parents, Myfanwy and Johnathan Webb, were instrumental in pushing for the inquest to proceed. Their stated aim was not simply to understand how their son died, but to drive better education about mammalian meat allergy, also known as alpha-gal syndrome, among both the general public and the medical profession. Myfanwy Webb had previously told the coroner: "I may never be able to hold him again but he was and will always be an integral part of my life."
The case raises questions that go beyond one family's tragedy. Mammalian meat allergy remains poorly understood in clinical settings, and the initial misattribution of Jeremy's death to asthma alone illustrates how easily the condition can be missed. For residents living in tick-prone bushland areas along Australia's east coast, the risk is not theoretical.
The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy has published guidance on tick-induced allergies, but awareness among general practitioners, emergency physicians and patients with existing respiratory conditions remains uneven. Advocates for improved allergy education argue that asthmatic patients in particular should be screened for the condition if they live or spend time in tick-endemic areas, given how dramatically a latent meat allergy can complicate an asthma episode.
Jeremy Webb's inquest will not bring him back. What it can do, if its findings are acted upon by health authorities and the medical community, is ensure that clinicians encountering a similar presentation in future are better equipped to recognise what they are dealing with. The NSW Coroner's Court findings now sit on the public record as a prompt for exactly that kind of systemic change. Whether governments and health agencies treat this as a one-off tragedy or a call to action is the question that remains open.