Call to review allergen labelling.

The Allergen Bureau developed an allergen assessment and labelling tool quite a few years ago and it has since been reviewed into it’s second version. The tool is called VITAL (Voluntary Incidental Trace Allergen Labelling) and sets a method to be used to determine the levels of the recognised food allergens in a product and then includes a system for labelling of those foods.

The revision was based on the results from a recent international study, which has developed reference doses of 11 recognised food allergens, based on the results of 55 clinical food challenge studies.

According to Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia, in Australia, food allergies affect 10 per cent of infants, 4-8 per cent of children aged between 5 and 13 years, and about 2 per cent of people over 13. Most allergies in children disappear over time.

Hen’s egg, cow’s milk, peanuts and tree nuts are the most common triggers for food allergy. Seafood, sesame, soy, fish and wheat are the less common triggers. Life-long allergies are usually from peanuts, tree nuts, seeds and seafood.

Interestingly, the international study was originally implemented as a result of the original VITAL system.

The study was done as a joint project by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in Australia, the Food Allergy Research and Resource Program (FARRP) of the University of Nebraska in the US, TNO in the Netherlands and Unilever in the UK

There are some businesses in Australia that already utilising VITAL as their tool for allergen assessment and labelling. As a result of this recent study, the call has now gone out to have utilisation of this, now well recognised, dose based system into the Food Standards Code, and other world legislation, as the method for labelling of all allergen containing foods.

Professor Katie Allen, lead author of the study and Director of Population Health at MCRI, said; “Establishing a reliable labelling system that is informed by evidence and is practical to use will not only enhance the safety and credibility of precautionary labelling but also enable manufactures to minimise its overuse through a formal risk assessment tool. This in turn will provide increased consumer confidence in their legitimacy and enable allergic consumers to eat a wider variety of food with safety and confidence. The majority of the allergic population would have access to a wider variety of foods if the reference dose concept were adopted by the food industry and used to guide labelling decisions.”

This article has been written by Rachelle Williams – The Green Food Safety Coach