Food safety Always check the label
With an estimated one in six suffering with food allergies, more consumers are becoming reliant on allergy-free alternatives and food labels. As many call for stricter labelling, Martin Morris speaks to Donald Prater, acting director at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, and Dr James Cooper, deputy director of food policy at the Food Standards Agency, to hear how their organisations are preventing unethical food labelling practices.
F
ood allergies can range from the mildly irritating – think itching or swelling – to potentially life threatening, brought on by an anaphylactic attack. Anaphylaxis can occur in moments, typically within 20–120 minutes, and will involve more than one organ system, for example, the skin, respiratory tract and/or gastrointestinal tract. It will also likely require the use of an adrenaline injector, such as an EpiPen, to deliver a single pre-measured dose of adrenaline for quick relief.
Critics have long charged, however, that not enough is being done to prevent the mislabelling of products as well as bad actors employing poor practices. This is what agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the UK have historically been tasked with policing.
Anaphylaxis, for example, is a growing problem. In 2021, the British Medical Journal reported that while the death rate has fallen – likely due to improvements in the recognition and management of symptoms – hospital admissions for food-induced anaphylaxis have tripled over the 20-year period from 1998–2018. The research from Imperial College London’s National Heart and Lung Institute measured time trends, age and sex distributions for admissions due to food and non-food anaphylaxis triggers and then compared with reported fatalities. It showed 101,000-plus people were admitted to hospital for anaphylaxis, and of these 30,700 (30%) were coded as due to a food trigger.
While the obvious question is why this should be the case, the actual answer is not clear cut. The US-based Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Team (FAACT) argues that increasing susceptibility is likely multifactorial in nature, not being explainable by genetics alone and likely the result of our modern, industrialised environment.
Determining the causes of allergies is one thing, protecting people through product labelling is entirely another. In the US, the FDA is tasked with enforcement. As Donald Prater, acting director of the Center for
Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com 77
Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) at the FDA, puts it: “The FDA enforces regulations requiring companies to list all ingredients on packaged foods and beverages, which is important for those with food allergies and hypersensitivities who need to avoid specific types of foods. Additionally, for foods designated major food allergens, there are more specific labelling requirements.” Unsurprisingly, the labelling landscape is an ever changing one; a case in point being the recent implementation of the FASTER Act in the US. Originally, there were eight designated major food allergens: milk, eggs, soy, peanuts, wheat, tree nuts, crustacean shellfish and fish. However, on 23 April 2021, the Food Allergy Safety, Treatment, Education and Research (FASTER) Act was signed into law, declaring sesame as the ninth major food allergen. “All requirements applicable to the other eight major food allergens, including allergen labelling to identify the food source of all major food allergens used to make the food and manufacturing requirements, apply to sesame as of 1 January 2023,” says Prater.
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