Posted by kathryn in Labels & advertising

Next in Q & A Thursday, Simone has asked about allergens in food products and why the phrase may contain traces of . . . seems to be on every packet you pick up.

Since 2003 if a product contains one of the most common food allergens it has to be listed on the label, no matter how small the quantity. This means if a food contains peanuts, other nuts, seafood, fish, milk, gluten, eggs or soybeans this must be shown on the label.

Obviously this move was designed to help allergy sufferers and make it easier for them to work out which foods were safe. However, in practice it hasn’t worked out very well and has actually led to a restricting of the foods available to people with allergies.

Ensuring products are allergy free requires a number of measures during their manufacture. Ingredients have to be carefully segregated, equipment has to be cleaned between processes and manufacturers must to know where all their ingredients are from. Rather than taking these measures, most producers have taken the lazy and easy option of labelling all their products with the phrase “may contain traces of . . .”. In this way they can avoid taking responsibility for their manufacturing processes. It’s a play-it-safe strategy.

Therefore, what should have been a useful tool for allergy sufferers, is in practice, virtually useless. Most people end up avoiding foods they don’t need to, because of the potential risk. Alternatively many allergy sufferers are starting to ignore the warnings altogether, neither of which are satisfactory outcomes.

This post is part of Q & A Thursday – a weekly burst of blogging, where you get to dictate the subject matter. Q & A Thursday is all about simple, practical and sensible answers to food, diet and health dilemmas sent in by readers. If you have a question you’d like answered, then either leave a comment or send me an email.

30 August, 2007