Mum's desperate plea after daughter dies from eating chocolate biscuit

A Melbourne mother driven by the memory of her nine-year-old daughter’s death is pleading for the public’s help to draw attention to the way food products are packaged and labelled.

Helen Marrero’s daughter Isabel died after eating a Cadbury biscuit sent her into anaphylactic shock.

Her mum thought she was giving her daughter a biscuit she had purchased many times before, which was safe for her daughter’s egg allergy.

She hadn’t noticed the subtle difference in packaging and accidentally bought biscuits that contained egg traces.

“I will never forget the howling cries at the funeral of Isabel’s little friends,” Helen Marrero said.

As the first anniversary of her daughter’s death approaches, Ms Marrero is campaigning for allergen labels to be included on the front of all packaged foods, not just the back where ingredients can be missed.

She is petitioning to the federal government to introduce the labels.

However, Food Standards Australia says a “front-of-pack symbol may not be practical because such labels would affect almost every packaged food.”

“It’s gut wrenching that a child has died over a food package looking like another package,” Maria Said from Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia said.

“We want parents to read every pack, every time, but in the real world that is really challenging.”

Cadbury says the packaging was correctly labelled and fully compliant, but it has taken steps to improve its designs, with plans for updated packaging in the coming months.

For Isabel’s grieving mother, the promise is of little consolation.

“I’m going to continue [until] these changes are made,” she said. “It’s so important.”