US: Mom forced to dump 14.8 litres of breast milk at Heathrow airport

A US mother of two has spoken of her frustration that she was forced to dump 14.8 litres of breast milk at security at London’s Heathrow Airport. In an open letter posted on Facebook, Jessica Coakley Martinez, who was travelling without her eight-month-old son, said she felt “humiliated”, BBC reported. “You made me dump out nearly two weeks worth of food for my son,” she said. Heathrow says the London government’s rules on carrying liquids on planes are set out for passengers on its website. The rules, set out by the Department for Transport, reads that liquids may only be carried in containers holding 100ml or less in a transparent and re-sealable single bag. The website says exceptions are made in the case of baby food or baby milk but only if the passenger was travelling with a baby. It says excess liquids should be carried as hold luggage. Martinez wrote that, although she should have looked up the rules, the regulation that breast milk was not allowed if the mother was travelling without her baby was “incredibly unfair and exclusionary in consideration of all of the other working mothers like me”.