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?

I'm very clued in re allergies and I wouldn't take my child to Costa EVER if they were severely allergic to diary. No way! So the staff has some fault of course but can't be solely blamed. Costa can't guarantee a milk free drink so that's enough of a reason to just avoid the place.

I think some people are way too lenient with severe allergies ... you have to be really, really careful to the point of just avoiding restaurants and coffees. That's the reality of allergies.

'Under Costa’s rules, customers who ask for a non-dairy product or state they have a dietary requirement should be shown a book that is kept under the till that includes ingredients and details of how the drink is made, the court heard.'

I don't drink cow's milk and I've never seen this book in my life. Very much sounds like something Costa lawyers are saying to cover their backs because this doesn't ever happen in practice.

Hacing said that, if you're that deadly allergic to milk, you should be asking to see this book yourself and not relying on minimum wage staff.

Probably more to this case than is being said in this article however

Another thing which could help is stickers on the top of any drink with non dairy milk saying what the milk is. So if you are expecting a soya drink and there’s no sticker you know it’s not right. At some restaurants they put flags in the allergen foods, or serve allergen food on a square plate.

110% this.

I have a child who has a nut allergy, resulting in anaphylaxis. It isn't worth the risk.

It's terribly sad that she died, but with a diary allergy so severe, I'd never be buying my child a hot drink from a coffee shop.

The two we used to go to always showed us, despite it being the same staff who knew our order off by heart.

@Bellamari .

TThe interesting point is the balance of reponsibility. Should those with allergens run a gauntlet with food safety to be normal or should there be really quite stringent regulations on food outlets to ensure safety.

If a reseraunt allows salmonella in good they would be definitely negligent and potentially prosecuted so shouldn't the same focus on safety be there for allergies?

Carrying an epipen isn't a choice as such, they're only prescribed if a certain set of conditions is met. Which presumably they weren't for this girl's previous reactions.

Well they can be employed. Just not in a customer facing role. It's not racist to require a decent command of English for that.
Plenty of us have English as a second or even third language. That only means we may not understand some colloquialisms or similar. Not that we can't speak it at all to the point of needing an interpreter.

This Mum has lost her child. A little empathy and compassion wouldn’t go amiss.

Back in the day when I was a barista at Nero, I accidentally served someone cows milk instead of the requested soya. I realised as they
left and chased the street.
Thankfully that was not someone with an allergy but in the stressful fast pace environments that are busy coffee shops- I can see how these things happen.
There is huge pressure to sell sell sell (‘would you like to try our Equadorian blend today?’) and you have a long queue with not enough staff members with customers shouting at you.

The reason for low staffing is because the management reduce hours when the store is not making enough money. So whilst the barista is responsible- I think the chain and management could do a lot more to support their employees in to doing a better job. I love the idea of the customer signing a card and handing over so the barista has a visual reminder whilst making the drink.

Even if the staff prepared the correct drink (which they didn’t) it’s so easy for drinks to get mixed up. It looks like previous reactions not as serious if the mum didn’t accept the Epi pen.

An article I read earlier said that she wasn’t allowed an epipen but i wasn’t clear whether that was at all (so not prescribed) or just at school (ie the school had their own stock and she wasn’t allowed her own). If she wasn’t allowed one at school was she meant to go to school after the dentist so didn’t have it with her?

A surprisingy amount of people don’t realise this.

Our son is allergic to cows milk, peanuts and kiwi, for these he has an auto-injector. He previously had oral allergy syndrome if he ate strawberries, recently a strawberry caused a proper allergic reaction, the allergy clinic stated he did not need an epi-pen and antihistamines would be sufficient. So if it wasn’t for the allergies he already has, he wouldn’t have an auto-injector and we’d likely be happy with anti-histamines as we would be trusting his consultant.

I knew a young person working as a lifeguard and she also was on minimum wage and could be tried for manslaughter if something went wrong.

To be honest if I was going to court in a foreign country I’d want an interpreter no matter how well I thought I spoke the language. She could speak enough English well enough for a coffee shop but not for legal stuff.

If it were my daughter with such a severe allergy I certainly would not take her to Costa for a hot chocolate . A hot chocolate ? For someone with a severe allergy? Far too risky and unrealistic expectation that staff will clean machine just for her. Making it from soya milk fine, but expecting them to clean machine specifically for her? Can you imagine if everyone expected this? I do not blame the staff at all. Her mother had the responsibility for her daughter. Hot chocolate should have been a treat prepared in their own kitchen, sage bottled drinks when out

There's no excuse. Allergies are drilled into staff these days, the mere mention of allergies in any place I've gone to has seen us served by management and every element of anything we touch flagged and prepared separately. The staff are culpable in this death. That said I've been told by Costa even with alternative milks it still contains milk - it's the chocolate powder plus cross contamination.

I read the story elsewhere the other day. It was very strange, as well as tragic.

Firstly, who buys their kid hot chocolate en route to a dental appointment?

My late sibling had severe allergies and there is no chuffing way my mother would have proceeded with the purchase in circumstances where she didn't feel the server understood what was being said.

The girl's mother was obviously not lacking in common sense since she managed to raise a severely allergic child to age 13 - which must have required a lot of foresight and fire-fighting. I can't help but think though that it seems to have deserted her on this occasion.

As PP have pointed out though, the inquest is still underway.

Costa is a fast-paced quite stressful environment. They have clocks up on the wall timing how fast the staff perform, so the emphasis is on quick service and not on thoroughness.

This is a very sad case, and in hindsight, I'm sure the Mum regrets going into Costa every day of her life.

If you know you can die from simple food, why would you go out and just breeze around? Why didnt you make your own so you know that you know that you know

Having sat through a talk with a solicitor in regards to corporate manslaughter (admittedly in construction) I genuinely came out scared about ever making a mistake at work. We got advised by the solicitor to not speak which is exactly what she has been advised and not to answer any question where it isn’t a straight fact, such as an answer which would lead you to say I think.
I also thought it would be the higher ups that would get in the shit, which is a common misplacement, but they will go quite far down the managerial chain. I imagine Costa are shitting themselves and that book will be very commonly seen going forward and very clear signage. I have to say from the article it wasn’t fully clear which part was miscommunicated so I imagine in a loud and busy coffee shop you may not be able to understand each other fully.

It sounds like a constellation of poor communication and poor decision making all round. I really hope the server isn’t prosecuted or held criminally liable. I’m sure everyone involved in this tragedy feels regret and wishes they’d done things differently. The mother wanted to buy her daughter a treat. The barista wanted to give the mother what she’d ordered. Good intentions resulting in tragedy.

Lots of people who don't understand or particularly care about oral hygiene and general health would buy a hot chocolate en route to the dentist. A third of British children are obese; I doubt their parents would hesitate to buy them a sugary drink en route to anywhere.

Being (potentially) a bit thick or lazy with regard to dentistry doesn't automatically mean the mum in this situation is to blame for her child's death.

Or the fact that another poster saids that a ''Dentist'' had offered them an epi pen, and they refused, saying they use antihistamines instead?

Epi pens surely are given by GPs?

I don't get that '' the hot chocolate has milk in it'' - surely OAT 'milk' is markedly different in every way to dairy milk.

Poor daughter.

Why wasn't an epi pen carried at all times?

The severity of an allergy can change. The girls
family may not have known she could experience an anaphylactic reaction despite knowing of her dairy allergy. Also possible to develop allergies you never had before.