Food Labels To Reveal Allergy-causing Ingredients
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday September 19, 2000
Food labels will be required to mention allergy-causing ingredients under a tough new regime being proposed to State and Federal governments.
The Australia New Zealand Food Authority has recommended that food labels detail allergenic ingredients, including milk, eggs, fish, nuts and soybean, no matter how slight their presence in the food. The move, which has come under fire from the food industry, is a significant expansion of labelling requirements but would reflect current science and consumer demand, the authority says.
The managing director of ANZFA, Mr Ian Lindenmayer, said that while the food industry was happy to label positive features of food ingredients, it should also be obliged to alert consumers to any negatives.
However, the director of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, Mr Mitch Hooke, said he took exception to the suggestion of ascribing motives which he said were ``simply untrue".
Mr Hooke said on ABC radio yesterday that the authority was ``politicising the debate and I consider that unconscionable conduct for a statutory body".
But Mr Lindenmayer said current requirements only obliged manufacturers when they made a nutrition claim about a food to show nutritional composition.
Under the proposed new code, three levels of labelling will be required to protect people with allergies or food sensitivities.
According to ANZFA, about 2 per cent of the population have a food allergy and the issue has been a priority area in a sweeping review of food standards.
The first level will require all main ingredients that can cause severe reactions to be declared on the labels. These are cereals containing gluten, shellfish, egg, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, nuts, sesame seeds and sulphites in concentrations of more than 1 per cent.
The second level will require larger advisory statements where the public may not know of a non-life threatening risk of an ingredient. These are likely to include aspartame, quinine, unpasteurised products and added caffeine.
Third, warning statements will be required where people may not necessarily know about a health risk from an allergen such as royal jelly which can cause severe reactions in asthmatics, or where the ingredient may not be expected, such as alcohol in food essences.
Mr Lindenmayer said while it was fine for the industry to promote foods which were healthy, there were many foods containing large amounts of salt, fat and in many cases high levels of calories, and it was important for such nutrition information to be labelled.
But Mr Hooke said it was quite wrong to accuse the industry of only providing nutritional information which the law required, adding that about 70 per cent of food products already carried a nutritional panel.
``If you go further, and you mandate that information required, it means that labelling will be required on food products, many of which are of no nutritional significance in the diet," he said.
But ANZFA argues much of the current food standards code was developed without modern scientific understanding of allergies.
The proposed labelling regime should be considered by State and Federal food ministers in November and introduced in 2002.
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© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald