Family’s food label plea after allergy mum’s Pret death
THe family of a mother of five who died after eating a Pret A Manger wrap wrongly described as dairy-free yesterday demanded an urgent overhaul of food labelling.
Celia Marsh’s husband and daughters spoke out after a coroner said that lessons must be learned to stop future deaths.
The 42-year-old dental nurse suffered anaphylactic shock from the super-veg rainbow flatbread bought at a Pret in Bath.
Having suffered allergies since childhood, she always ‘triplechecked’ food but did not know the snack had traces of milk protein. Minutes after eating the £3.75 wrap on the shopping trip in December 2017 she collapsed and was pronounced dead at hospital. Her family, from Melksham in Wiltshire, is understood to be considering a civil case against the manufacturer, Planet Coconut.
Pret was charged with food safety failures but the prosecution was dropped for lack of evidence. Mrs Marsh’s widower, Andy, 51, said the failures had cost him his best friend.
He added: ‘I want to see testing at every stage of the process to make sure nothing gets through the cracks. People with allergies are currently relying solely on the fact that the packaging says it is “free from”.’
His daughter Kayleigh, 20, said: ‘Mum was so on it with labelling, she would triple check everything. Change has to come to make sure no other family goes through what we went through.’
Senior coroner for Avon, Maria voisin, gave a narrative verdict and said: ‘A product marked dairy-free had become cross contaminated with milk.’
She has sent a prevention of future deaths report to the Food Standards Agency with recommendations including tightening up potentially misleading information such as ‘free from’ or ‘may contain’.
A Planet Coconut spokesman said it had bought a licence from COyO in Australia to manufacture the product and claimed COyO withheld vital allergen information. COyO founder Henry Gosling insisted the licence obliged Planet Coconut to ensure the product was completely dairy-free.
In 2016, Natasha ednan-Laperouse died after eating a Pret baguette with sesame seeds bought at Heathrow.
Her mother Tanya, co-founder of the Natasha Allergy research Foundation, which has been supporting the family, said: ‘The great tragedy of allergy deaths is that they are mostly avoidable. Celia’s husband and five daughters have to live with this terrible truth.
‘Lessons must be not just learned but actioned. We need urgent reform of the flawed and misleading precautionary allergen labelling system.’
Pret chief Pano Christou last night said the firm had liaised with suppliers and changed labelling policies to protect people with food allergies. He added: ‘If Pret had ever known that the COyO yoghurt may have contained milk, we would never have used the ingredient.’