5.10.5. Control tools and policies

Since the main way of managing food allergy and intolerance is avoiding exposure to the incriminated food, adequate food labelling is a major policy tool for protecting consumers at risk. Council Directive 2000/13/EC (European Commission, 2000) setting the general provisions on the labelling of foodstuffs to be delivered to the consumer, was amended by Commission Directive 2003/89/EC (European Commission, 2003) as regards the indication of the ingredients present in foodstuffs. The new labelling rules in particular aim at ensuring that consumers suffering from food allergies or who wish to avoid eating certain ingredients for any other reason are informed. They foresee that all ingredients in foodstuffs will have to be included on the label and abolish the "25% rule" in Council Directive 2000/13/EC (European Commission, 2000), which meant that it was not obligatory to label the components of compound ingredients that make up less than 25% of the final food product. In addition, Annex IIIa of Commission Directive 2003/89/EC (European Commission, 2003) specifies a list of food ingredients or substances that are known to trigger allergic reactions or intolerances in sensitive individuals for which no labelling exemptions are allowed. Whenever the listed ingredients/substances or their derivatives are used in the production of foodstuffs, they must be labelled with a clear reference to the name of the allergenic source (Table 5.10.1). Alcoholic beverages also have the obligation to mention allergens on their labels. These new provisions were fully implemented as of 25 November 2005. It is of renowned that European legislation does not differentiate between IgE-mediated and non IgE-mediated food allergy, or between food allergy and food intolerance regarding the labelling of substances or ingredients that may cause adverse reactions to foodstuffs.

Table 5.10.3. List of food ingredients/substances subject to compulsory labelling in the EU when used in the in the production of foodstuffs and derivatives exempted from labelling.

(1) And products thereof, insofar as the process that they have undergone is not likely to increase the level of allergenicity assessed by the EFSA for the relevant product from which they originated.

However, since it is possible that some ingredients or substances, derived from allergens, are not likely to be a risk for allergic peoples, Commission Directive 2003/89/EC establishes, during a transitional period, a procedure which allows the industry to provide scientific justification for that, and obtain a provisional labelling exemption for these ingredients or substances. Commission Directive 2005/26/EC establishing a list of substances provisionally exempted was adopted by the Commission on 21st March 2005, following the opinions of the European Food safety Authority (EFSA) on each request. These provisional exemptions were granted until 25 November 2007. Requests for exemptions beyond that date required new requests from industry on the ingredients or substances for which temporary exemption was granted, that were submitted to the EC and evaluated by EFSA (available at http://guido.efsa.eu.int/cs/ContentServer). As a result of this process, the Commission has recently adopted Directive 2007/68/EC (EC, 2007) establishing a list of substances permanently exempted form labelling (Table 5.10.1). It is to note that the lists of food ingredients or substances under either mandatory labelling or exempted form could be updated at any time based on new scientific evidence.