The Food Standards Agency is seeking views on new advice for how and when to apply precautionary allergen labelling (PAL), commonly seen as “may contain” warnings on food packaging.

Under the new advice, and to ensure compliance with food law, food businesses should specify which of the 14 major allergens their PAL refers to – for example, using “may contain peanuts” or “may contain tree nuts” rather than the generic “may contain nuts”.

The FSA is recommending that PAL only be applied following a risk assessment, to ensure consumer safety and choice are not unnecessarily affected.

Views are also being sought on new guidance that PAL should not be applied for the same allergen that products are also claiming to be “free-from”. This would mean that a product labelled “dairy free”, for instance, should not be labelled with a “may contain milk” statement.

The proposed changes were supported by over 90% of respondents to the “May Contain Consultation”, which was launched in December 2021.

The updated guidance also advises businesses not to use No Gluten Containing Ingredients Statements (NGCIs), such as “this menu has been designed for a non-gluten diet”. The FSA recommends that only the phrases “gluten free” or “low gluten” be used, because NGCIs have been found to mislead consumers.

The consultation closes on Monday 22nd May and can be found here.

The BFFF would encourage members to answer this consultation directly, but, if possible, would very much welcome sight of your responses. This will assist us in ensuring our response most effectively represents the whole membership. Please send any comments to deniserion@bfff.co.uk.

New analysis conducted by the University of Southampton, King’s College London and the National Institute for Health and Care Research has revealed that introducing foods containing peanuts to babies between four to six months could lead to a 77% reduction in peanut allergy.

Peanut allergy is estimated to affect 1 in 50 children in the UK. The analysis suggested that with every month of delayed introduction, the reduction in peanut allergy decreased. Furthermore, delaying the introduction of peanut-based foods until the child was one-year-old would only cut allergy cases by 33%.

The analysis concluded that in countries where peanut allergy is a public health concern, healthcare professionals should help parents introduce peanut products into their infants’ diet at four to six months of life.

You can read the research in full in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology here.

Following a mandate from the European Commission, EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) are now calling for all available data on the occurrence of chemical contaminants in food and feed.

National food authorities, research institutions, academia, food business operators and other stakeholders are invited to submit data on occurrence of contaminants with a focus on the substances and related substances on the non-exhaustive list here. This list includes process contaminants such as acrylamide and 3-MCPD, organic contaminants such as dioxins, mycotoxins, plant toxins and phthalates.

The deadline for the complete transmission of all data is 30th June 2023. Data received after this date is unlikely to be considered in the ongoing scientific opinions but will be retained in the database for possible future scientific assessments.

The last two months, period of 1 July – 31 August is set for the data validation and data acceptance in EFSA Scientific Data Warehouse (sDWH). Therefore, DCF will be maintained open until 31 August 2023.

You can find more detail here.