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?

All Costas now have signs up saying they cannot guarantee that any thing is nut, diary, etc free due to risk of contamination. Even if you tell the server you have a severe allergy they do not take any responsibility for what you eat. They are not allowed to advise at all about what can/not be eaten. It is all the customer’s responsibility.
And yes, there is milk in the chocolate mix at Costa

I don’t have an allergy, but based on how frequently places like Starbucks and Costa get my drinks wrong, even when asked and checked and it’s on the receipt, I don’t think I could trust them with an allergy order.

Awful for the mum and daughter, I can only imagine that the allergy had probably never been so bad, or maybe she’d never been exposed to such a high volume of the allergen before.

The mother was told hot chocolate contains milk and she said that’s fine. I can’t have dairy so have to be very careful, if someone said to me my drink contained milk I would instantly pick up on that and be questioning the order so I could get it without milk

I wouldn’t say blame but yes sadly I think it’s a risk you take with non prepackaged food. So with Dd we quiz staff in restaurants no end and I have lost count of the number of places we’ve said “thanks but no thanks” and turned round and left without eating. Sometimes we’ve been out and Dd has had a cereal bar and banana for lunch rather than take the risk, and that’s for a non life threatening food reaction. She just doesn’t want to be vomiting for 48 hours.

In that case it was just a matter of time. You need to act fast in these case. And if mum didn't know how serious it was the child would have had milk at some point.
if your milk allergy is deadly you are not a Costa costumer unless you have a death wish.
The tragedy is that medical help wasn't sought in time.

Maybe the mum wasn’t worried about the minor traces of milk in the hot chocolate powder? Lots of people are fine with tiny traces but a full mouthful would send them into anaphylactic shock. Mum has probably seen the book before and already knew this product is fine for her daughter. Obviously not if made with cows milk though.

@Coconutter24 I’m not sure that's what the mum was told - I read it as the server (not the barista, who was a separate person) telling the mum that the frother was used for cow's milk and the mum saying that was fine (or at least, the mum thinking that this is what the server was saying).

I don't think anyone who knew they were anaphylactic to milk would drink a hot chocolate from Costa because the risk from cross contamination is just too high. We have a DD with a peanut allergy, she hasn't had anaphylaxis but the risk is there so we have epipens. She does have may contains on the advice of her specialist but we're extra cautious in places like bakeries and ice cream shops.

The chocolate powder at costa is dairy free, it is produced in a facility that isn’t dairy free, this means you often get something like a Y shown for allergen, but it isn’t actually an ingredient of the product, just made in a place that also makes some products with milk.

It does sound that the Mum didn’t know how serious the allergy was. No epi pen or anti histamines on them indicates this was just a tragedy. Why refuse an epi pen?

The allergen book says that the hot chocolate even with soya milk may contain traces of milk, so wouldn't be suitable for her regardless

Sounds like miscommunication on both parts with horrific consequences

That's what makes no sense to me.

Why did the mother say "That's fine" when told the drink is made with milk if she also insisted on the jugs being washed?

It’s tragic and could have been prevented at so many points. Very sad. If the mother declined to look at the allergen book, I don’t see how the poor barista can be blamed.

This made me 🙄 though:
Doctors are paid for life and death decisions but are Costa staff?

Would a branch manager be paid enough to make life and death deductions? The highest pay for baristas at Pret was a few pennies more than the lowest pay for junior doctors.

www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/12/junior-doctors-paid-lower-hourly-rate-than-workers-to-get-at-pret

I concede F1 doctors are now earning more like £16 per hour post strike.

I have a close friend with coeliac disease and so she is strictly gluten free.

Whenever we go to restaurants and try to order, the policy seems to be that the manager has to come out, go through the menu with her, and then authorise the order themselves and communicate it directly to the kitchen. I think this might be part of the new law on allergies that was passed after that poor girl died on the plane from eating a Pret sandwich.

Perhaps it's time that all places serving food and drinks had to have this measure in place. The reality is that the hospitality industry employs a lot of staff whose English isn't fluent and mistakes and misunderstandings can happen. Having someone on shift who is in charge of orders where a customer has an allergy would prevent more needless deaths.

Whatever happened here, it's a tragedy and I hope that more legislation is put in place to prevent it happening again.

This is what I meant. The server said it contains milk, mum said that’s fine because she’s seen the book before and knows it’s not an ingredient, just a possible trace as it’s used in the same factory. Would have been fine (probably has been fine loads of times) except they used cows milk.

Natasha's law was introduced to give allergic people more confidence when buying food. I guess there is the legal responsibility to declare the use of potential allergens in good but can this be a used as a universal disclaimer to avoid cross contamination or responsibility for mistakes like this?

It does seem like there is a false sense of confidence given to those who suffer from allergies in that legal requirement to display allergens in good products makes all food outlets 'safe'.

She may well have been fine with may contains until that point. The problem was that a sip of milk isn't a trace amount, and then they didn't realise what was happening, presumably as she hadn't reacted so severely before.

I wonder if the mum didn’t understand the barista when the barista said the chocolate powder contained milk? Did she mishear due to the accent?

Or did she think that the lactose in the powder wouldn’t have been enough to cause a reaction compared to the lactose in the milk (or whatever element of the milk she was allergic to).

I don’t know much about actual milk allergies but Dd as a teen was lactose intolerant and there’s the whole milk ladder thing, she could tolerate some milk containing products and not others.

The surprising thing is she had other allergies mentioned. Surely if you have a kid with 3 allergies, you carry an epipen? Not to mention not going into a place that is 95% based on things your kid is allergic to? Can’t even begin to understand why she refused an epi pen from a trained medical professional,

My kid is allergic to fish and I never got near a chip shop. Never mind going in and asking for a sausage supper with the equipment washed. The risk of cross contamination is just too high.

I have an allergy (carry 2 epipens) and have never been shown an allergy book at Costa before despite declaring my allergy every time. didn’t even know that was a thing!

I do find it odd that the mother refused an epipen at the dentist though and that someone with a known dairy allergy wasn’t carrying an epipen, when I got diagnosed as having an allergy I remember the doctor saying multiple times that allergies and reactions can get worse over time and always to carry epipens just in case. I feel for the family though, it’s absolutely horrendous. The poor barista must feel awful too. Very sad all round.

These were my thoughts a) who is going to get a hot chocolate on the way to the dentist
b) if your daughter has a deadly milk allergy why is she having any kind of hot chocolate

It's really tough living with any kind of severe allergy. I'm a Coeliac and the general ignorance in most coffee shop chains is awful i.e. being told you can have something vegan instead of gluten free (spoiler - you can't),. Indies are just as bad and one of old faves puts all the GF cakes out touching the regular cakes which means a Coeliac can't have them. So I do think that more training should be offered to staff so that they can understand allergens a little further as this might help prevent future issues. I do get that there is a high staff turnover but it would still be good for members of staff to have at least a basic understanding e.g. vegan is not the same as gluten free.

In answer to the questions why you would take such a chance. Sometimes it's just nice to feel normal and be able to go in a coffee shop like an average person. I also suspect that in this poor girl's experience she had not had such a severe reaction previously. I'm not an expert in this case at all but I'm not sure I agree with blaming the mother of a dead child for not being careful enough. It sounds like a tragic accident.

There comes a point where you as a person with an allergy just have to live your life. You can’t lock yourself away and never eat or drink. You take the best precautions and get on with living normally.

The child had no epi pen and the mother refused an epi pen going by the comments here, there was no request for dairy free chocolate or ensuring the wand hadn't been used to heat dairy milk earlier, if the instruction was to 'wash out the milk jug' in between the 2 soya chocolate drinks being made how was the mother going to ensure the child got the second drink and not the first. It sadly sounds like the child's allergy had not been so severe previously and mom got caught out sadly, and no one can blame the mom (and if this was an out of the blue anaphylactic reaction, is anyone to blame?) so the employee gets the focus of blame.
Yes for her own sake she should have followed policy and then mom would have realised she was an idiot for not checking the actual chocolate, or as many do shrug her shoulders and say it's fine, anyway if anything happens I can give her an antihistamine, either way the blame wouldn't be an the employee.
It's an awful awful tragedy, similar to one that happened in Dublin a few years back when a young teen with a peanut allergy and no epi was taken to a buffet for lunch and had satay sauce, those poor parents in both families. My child's nut allergy is not anaphylactic but there is always the fear that it could become so and what if it happens when I'm not there?