When food labels confuse allergy issue Posted on August 27th
WASHINGTON - It’s one of the biggest frustrations of life with food allergies: that hodgepodge of warnings that a food might accidentally contain the wrong ingredient.
The warnings are voluntary - meaning there’s no way to know if foods that don’t bear them really should. And they’re vague: Is “may contain traces of peanuts” more reliable than “made in the same factory as peanuts”?
Now health officials in the United States and Canada are debating setting standards, amid increasing concern that consumers are confused enough to ignore the warnings.
“Really, the safest thing you can do is make all your food at home from scratch, period,” says Margaret Sova McCabe of Sanbornton, N.H., whose son Tommie, 7, is allergic to peanuts, dairy, wheat, and five other ingredients.
But she doesn’t find that practical - and repeatedly has spotted longtime favorite “safe” foods suddenly bearing new warnings that accidental contamination is possible after all.
The Food and Drug Administration will ask those same questions at a public hearing Sept. 16, a first step toward developing what it calls “a long-term strategy” to clear the confusion.
“Advisory labeling may not be protecting the health of allergic consumers,” the FDA said.
Canadian authorities have gone a step further, saying accidental-allergy warnings are “misleading consumers” and advising food companies to begin clarifying them even as Health Canada researches a formal policy.
The food industry recognizes there is confusion. The Grocery Manufacturers of America has been working to set new guidelines on the warnings for more than a year but declined comment before next month’s meeting.
About 12 million Americans have food allergies. Severe ones trigger 30,000 annual emergency-room visits, and 150 to 200 deaths a year.
Starting in 2006, a U.S. law required that foods disclose in plain language when they intentionally contain highly allergenic ingredients such as peanuts or dairy.
Left out of the law are accidental-allergy warnings - for foods that might become contaminated because they were made in the same factory, or on the same machines, as allergen-containing products. The FDA has said that a quarter of inspected food factories can make such a mix-up.