The mother of a girl who died after suffering a severe reaction to hot chocolate has accused the food industry of teetering allergen safety training like a tick box exercise.

Hannah Jacob's mother, Abby, made the comments after the 13-year-old died last year as a result of a failure of communication when the mother brought the drink at a branch of Costa Coffee.

Now, Costa has described Hannah's death as a tragedy. Our reporter, Bobby Jeffrey, has more.

Described by family as a vivacious caring and affectionate child who loved life. Hannah Jacobs was just 13 when she died after drinking a hot chocolate. She had a severe dairy allergy, and within hours of taking a sip of the drink, Hannah had died. A coroner yesterday ruled it was a combination of failures that caused her death, failing to follow the allergy process in place, as well as a failure in communication.

It is clear to me that although the food service industry and medical professionals are required to have allergy training, the training is really not taken seriously enough. Better awareness is really needed in these industries and across society of the symptoms of anaphylaxis.

Owen Kerry from East Sussex was celebrating his 18th birthday when he had an anaphylactic reaction after eating chicken containing buttermilk, despite telling restaurant staff he was allergic to dairy. His dad has since been campaigning for Owen's law, something that's been recommended by the Food Standard Agency. It would mean all allergens have to be labeled on menus and also includes recommendations on things like training.

It's important that training is given and that this training is properly assessed. There's no point having an online module which basically you mark your own homework. It needs to be checked that the trainee has understood what is required of that particular restaurant system. That would all improve the situation, and that's part and parcel of what we're asking to be improved.

Owen's law builds on Natasha's law, which requires prepacked foods to have full ingredient lists. It was introduced in 2021 after the death of 15-year-old Natasha Ednan Laperose, who died after eating a prete manger baguette containing Sesame. Natasha's parents, alongside Hannah's mom, Abby, are calling for urgent government action. They want people to realize that allergies are a serious unpredictable health condition. And not a lifestyle choice. Puppie Jeffrey, BBC News.

We're joined now by Nadim and Tania Ednan Laperousse. Their daughter, Natasha, died after suffering a severe allergic reaction to Sesame baked into a presser manger baguette. Nadim, Tania, good morning to you. One can only imagine that this, yet another case of a severe allergic reaction takes you back to the loss of Tasha, but also, I suppose, garners you to do more to make changes. I know you've been working closely with Hannah's mom, Abby. What is your reaction and what are you working on at this moment in time to improve this situation, to protect more people.

Yeah. I mean, this is a really, yet again, another tragic story of a young life, British life, taken really far too early, cut short, completely Absolutely avoidable. Another food allergy tragedy. And as happened to us as a family, we lost our daughter, Natasha. We really empathize massively with Abby's mom and family, and indeed, many other families in UK have also lost their children. Around 50 families we know now in the UK whose children have died since our own child died. We're really on a mission, the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, Tania and I and our colleagues at the charity, to really bring about meaningful common sense change into the UK that would help protect these young people and start to dial back the tragedy and the increasing levels of hospitalisations around food allergies. A lot of it's common sense. In Abby's case, you can really feel a sense of how the real missed opportunities to save her life at several fronts. That's really quite shocking and distressful to hear.

Since When Natasha's Law came into force in 2021, how have things improved and where are the gaps do you feel now that need to be filled in?

Well, Natasha's Law, it closed a loophole that was actually in a food law at the time. That's been a great change for people who need to see what ingredients are in the food that they want to buy. But what we hear, I mean, Natasha would be 23 years old if she was alive today. Our journey up until she was 15 old was really having an allergic life and all the issues and the problems that came with that. But it often feels like nothing's changed, and that's what's really difficult to see. Everything from living your life like having a timely diagnosis to maybe a postcode lottery of clinics to not having any help or support once you become an adult. So the transition from being a child to adulthood is still very difficult and fraught, to accidents happening in schools and anaphylactic reactions from things that shouldn't be happening, to allergies in the workplace not being understood, and to allergy training in food businesses not being as good as they should be.

Nadim, good morning to you. It's Charlie here. I'm just looking at some of the comments of Costa Coffee in the light of this most recent, very sad death. Amongst the things they've said is that they've listened to everything the coroner has said this week and will carefully consider her comments together with any report she may issue and respond appropriately. Then we have Hannah's mother talking about a tick box exercise in training regimes. Now, the organizations, and I assume you've had direct contact with some of these companies, they can instill a practice, can't they? They can put a process in place, which is one thing, which is to a degree, could be a practical thing that could make a difference. What do you see in terms of whether that's working? Because this suggestion is that it is just that, a bit of paperwork rather than something that's making a difference.

I think it's fair to say that big corporations or companies like Costa or indeed others similar, certainly they'd like to do the right thing. And nobody gets up in the food and business industry in the morning and anticipates creating harm to their customers. However, what this situation that we're in now highlights, the training that's probably employed across the whole sector is not up to scratch. It's clearly let a family down in this case and probably let other families down, but we might not be hearing about it in the public sense at the moment. I think this means it's a real waking call, a wake-up call for these industries and these sectors to look again at how they can really improve their understanding of allergy, certainly for their staff and the way they train their staff, especially around hospitality where understandably, many of the employees are from at different countries, and English might not be their first language. And that's fine, and that's fair enough. But then the training needs to wrap around those people so that it really works and makes a difference because tick box is just not going to work for the millions of people with food allergies in this country who have money to spend and can spend wherever they like and buy whatever drinks and food.

They should be fully in the food economy and not excluded and be kept safe. Training, good training, will solve that to a large degree.

Yeah, Tania, I know that obviously you campaign on these issues for such personal reasons. I don't know, when you, as an individual, go into establishments to buy, I don't know, a sandwich or a coffee, those things, what do you see? I mean, given what's happened to your family, you must be so heightened to what's happening. I'm thinking when I go into a coffee, I get asked maybe a couple of questions about whether allergies or whatever. What do you see? What do you witness? What's been your experience recently?

I think my experience has been that the conversation around food allergies is like it never was. So this didn't happen when Natasha was alive, and there was never the possibility of someone even understanding a conversation about allergies if you went to a restaurant and you were trying to order something. So that has definitely changed. I think there is a greater awareness, and you always have the businesses that are really trying and they see food allergies as a risk to their customers, and they do their very, very best. I think what we do see is that there's a lot of fear around allergies in businesses, and it's really about raising the level of understanding, educating people. As soon as you start doing that, the fear starts to go, and we see too many The business is still struggling and actually even excluding allergic customers because of this fear.

I wonder if that education needs to start much earlier. It's part of our lives. It's something you talk about in school, so you're aware.

It's just embedded in your psyche. Absolutely. Yeah, spot on. I mean, honestly, with children, when we've gone to schools and we've done talks to schools, and these are young children, they get it so quickly, and they want to help their friends who have food allergies, and they actually go home and they teach their parents about the importance of looking after their allergic friends. But yes, we do need children to be safer in schools, but actually giving children the knowledge and educating them in it is absolutely incredible because they're like sponges and they get it straight away.

Tania, Nadim, Edmund, Laperus, both. Thank you so much for your time with us here on BBC Breakfast.