So should PAL be mandatory?

So you have a friend coming to dinner who is allergic to fish. How do you know that the Worcestershire Sauce you bought to marinate the steak is free from fish?

Well, that’s obvious right? You check out the label and see if fish is an ingredient.

All good right?

Well no, it is not all right.

Why you may ask? Even though the Food Standards Code requires that all of the recognised food allergens be shown on all food labels and there must be no unintended allergens in a food, the difficulty is how that is shown and, most importantly, how much of an allergen is allowed to be in there before that allergen must be shown on the label.

To complicate the whole issue for you deciding if a food contains fish is that there are multiple allergen related statements from manufacturers which appear on foods – from “may contain traces of….” to “made on a production line which also makes ………” to “made in a factory which also makes………” It is no wonder that the public gets confused about whether a specific food contains the allergen that is concerning them.

The Allergen Bureau developed a brilliant allergen labelling system several years ago called the Precautionary Allergen Label (PAL), which has a specific statement that is to be shown on the label depending upon the amount of the allergen present in the food.

This system requires that each food with food allergens must be tested to determine the amount of each of those allergens present in the food. Then depending upon the total amount of each allergen present and tables, based on ongoing scientific work by The Allergen Bureau, as to how that allergen must be shown on the label.

The PAL essentially has three levels of allergen labelling;

• For very very small amounts, the system states that as this amount is scientifically found to not cause any allergic reactions in people, that allergen does not need to be included on the label as either an ingredient or in an allergen statement.
• If the amount present in the food is within a certain range, depending upon the actual allergen, then there must be an allergen statement on the label, with specific wording.
• If the amount of the allergen present is aboive a set level, then it is considered to be an actual ingredient of the food and it’s labelling must meet the requirements of the Food Standards Code.

The PAL is not mandatory at this point in Australia and businesses can choose to put it in operation.

So there is an increasingly loud call for PAL to become mandatory and make it easier for you  to be able to work out if that Worcestershire Sauce does contain fish or . By the way there are at least two brands of Worcestershire Sauce in Australia that contain Anchovies.