Milk allergy death- should the book be thrown at the staff involved?

[mids2019]

....or if you are minimum wage staff member working in a stressed environment without English as a first language there should be leniency. Doctors are paid for life and death decisions but are Costa staff?

Exactly, same as low paid operators of any risky machinery, delivery drivers in cars and motorbikes etc . Lots of low paid jobs come with risks.

And tbh the company making the profits is the one who should get it's processes and training watertight

@WindsurfingDreams although I agree, people who use wheelchairs are excluded from many places.

Growing and preparing are different things; I don't grow potatoes, but I do prepare them.

The mother might have been assuming that it really wasn’t a life threatening allergy and maybe testing her daughter by buying something where there was bound to be contamination. People are very strange about intolerance/allergy and like to be dicks about it.

As a wheelchair user I am well aware of that. But I think what my children go through with allergies is very similar

I dont think the fact she had an interpreter means her English was poor, maybe she was stressed and wanted extra reassurance.

The last place i would take my daughter if she had a milk allergy would be a coffee shop

This was definitely not the case, have you bothered reading the article?

I don't get how people with severe alegrias take so many risks. I once was eating lunch at a university professional training event. We had filled a form before the event informing about allergies,etc. The girl sat opposite me had Nut Allergy written on her place marker but was served the same cake as me for desert that I new contained nuts on the recipe.
I told her my thoughts and had to insist she double check with the waiter. It did have nuts
She was going to eat it !! Maybe they don't really believe they could die? It chocked me. I have food intolerances and always double check, read labels, etc. I don't trust anyone as I will be the one to suffer afterwards.

The UK has one of the tightest laws around food and allergies in the world. Assuming Costa trained their staff up correctly and the mum stipulated her daughter's allergy then the only person to blame is the barista. The rest is inconsequential and wouldn't need to be considered if the barista had provided the order as asked.

I think there should be huge fines for businesses in situations like these so there is an incentive for them to properly train and educate their staff. I wouldn’t hold anyone personally responsible unless they intentionally gave it to someone. They’re minimum wage serving hundreds of cups of coffee a day so chances are every now and then a mistake will happen.

My children have mild allergies so we do eat out, however if they had very severe reactions I don’t think I would risk it, especially not some where like Costa were they are serving huge quantities at a fast pace.

Peanuts are legumes which is a different allergy to tree nuts. You can be allergic to one and not the other. She may have been peanut allergic but not tree nuts which would have made the cake safe. If she was allergic to tree nuts then the fault is squarely with the catering team, they checked for allergies, had a system to flag the allergies and neglected to follow that process.

If you RTFT you'll see this point has been addressed multiple times on the thread. There's lots of useful information on the thread about allergies that you may be not be aware of if you don't deal with allergies yourself day to day.

From what I can understand the milk chocolate powder already has milk in the ingredient list .So the product would never be completely dairy free ?

If you look on their allergen list online their hot chocolate with soya milk is a cross contamination not a contains, so their chocolate powder seems safe.

I suspect this girl had had many soya hot chocolates from Costa because of this.

It may have never been that bad? The first I knew as a teenager that I was lactose intolerant was after eating breakfast and being in so much pain I couldn't stand up.

My reaction to cheese came on quickly too. Never had any issues in adulthood with it until I had pizza one evening, developed migraine and vertigo. There were no warning signs at all. Ate a pizza with no problems the previous week.

Costa hot chocolate powder is vegan (well the one you buy to have at home is) I always ask for a coconut milk hot chocolate and have never been asked if I have any allergy or shown the book.
I wonder if the Costa shops have a different powder?

I couldn't agree more. If I was susceptible to such negative food reactions I wouldn't dream of risking consuming products I couldn't be certain of. Mistakes can occur for dozens of reasons other than miscommunication. Why risk a life for a beverage or a sandwich?

It’s all very well people saying avoid these places if you have allergies but for some that would exclude a lot of places and not be a normal life.

Even at school that’s not possible. One lunchtime another child threw their cheese sandwich on my child’s dinner!
Also a few years ago a teacher gave my egg allergic child a cake with egg in and when my child questioned what was in it teacher insisted it was safe and said she had thrown the packaging away. Her response to me afterwards was “it doesn’t contain dairy”. Still fuming about that to this day.

People with allergies have to make an assessment about every food related scenario they are in about how risky something is. If you are travelling, away from home, the shops are closed - sometimes the options are limited.

Because life goes on and you can't live in fear your whole life.

It's clear (from her subsequent actions) that the server did not hear 'soya milk' in the original order but did hear 'dairy allergy'. When the server asked (essentially) 'what's the point of me washing out this jug, when the hot choc has got milk in it", she was referring to the liquid milk the hot choc was being diluted with, but it's possible the Mum thought she was referring to the disclaimer traces that are listed in the hot choc powder, and said 'that's fine'. So in this instance, showing the customer the allergy book would have made no difference - the Mum already seemed aware of the traces that could be in the powder, the miscommunication centred around what milk was being used to make the hot chocolate.

And at that point the barista should have confirmed the order in full either with the customer or their colleague, not blindly carried on making the drink.

I get it was the staff fault. He was very apologetic and brought the alternative desert. It was a cake made with almond flour. Since she didn't eat after she was informed I guess she was alergic to it.
My chock is that alergic people trust these systems that aren't fail proof specially when you are often dealing with inexperienced staff since the food industry which has very high staff turnover

And as parents it's vitally important that we teach our children how to risk assess rather than just keep them at home. When they're 14 and out with their friends they need to be able to say that Five Guys isn't safe for them, but Wagamama is (or whatever). Children who haven't been taught how to appropriately risk assess their allergy are at a huge risk.

They ordered a hot chocolate with a non-dairy milk and a powder that is only a may contain for milk. Given they didn't have epipens on them it's very unlikely she'd had a severe reaction before. I don't think the family deserves the criticism they've had on here at all. Could happen to any of us.