Allergens in plain language

You would think that if there are a certain number of recognised food allergens in Australia, that the words used for them would be in simple to understand English.
Not so, according to a report released by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ).
The Plain English Allergen Labelling report makes several recommendations for changes to labelling on products and within the Code and other places.
FSANZ did a review of the regulatory management of food allergens in 2010 and this report shows the recommendations coming from it.
It highlights that just because the food industry understands what a word means, doesn’t mean that the public does, as an example sodium caseinate is derived from milk and although shown clearly on a label, the consumer may not know it is from dairy.
Considering the complexity of allergens, the report shows that there were four significant word issues.
The first is – what does “may contain” actually mean? And does it mean the same thing on all labels and foods? There needs to be standardisation across all foods and labels to ensure that everyone knows what it means when shown on a label.
Second – what does “cereal containing gluten” and “tree nuts” mean, because they are collective terms and not specific to a species or individual food.
Third – gluten is recognised as a food allergen but when declaed on a food label it doesn’t show if a specific cereal is involved.
The fourth finding relates to fish, molluscus and crustaceans. It seems that there is confusion on how to actually declare these food allergens and it is important because different people will react to different seafoods and knowing what is in the food is essential.