Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400-419)
Mrs Sue Hattersley, Miss Gill Fine, Ms Andrea Martinez-Inchausti,
Dr Ian Leitch and Mr Les Bailey
31 JANUARY 2007
Q400 Lord Colwyn: You keep in touch
with other research facilities throughout Europe and throughout
the world.
Mrs Hattersley: Yes. We scan the literature
and through these international consortia we are in touch with
other people working in the area.
Q401 Lord Broers: Labelling at too
low a level can render the label relatively useless. This is the
case with sulphites in my experience. I declare an interest, being
allergic to sulphites. You find that in almost every product it
says there are sulphites there whereas it is only above a given
concentration that most people—I think almost all people—are
allergic to sulphites, so by labelling everything as containing
sulphites makes the labelling virtually useless.
Mrs Hattersley: Sulphites actually are the only
allergen in the list that does have a threshold, so it is when
it is added above 10 parts per million that it has to be labelled.
Q402 Lord Broers: So it is not labelled
below that.
Mrs Hattersley: No. That is the one allergen
in the list that does have a threshold.
Ms Martinez-Inchausti: As Sue said, sulphites
is the only one for which a maximum level has been set under the
European legislation. It is very difficult to set levels at the
moment because of the lack of information that we have. Attempts
have started to try to set up a level for gluten and there is
an international body called Codex Alimentarius which has a draft
proposal to set a level for gluten for over 20 ppms. There are
associations which have been using that level, for example Coeliac
UK, to determine whether something is gluten free or not. However,
if you were to apply the legislation accurately any possible level
of gluten present in food should be labelled if the ingredient
is deliberately added. It is the only allergen on which they are
actually doing some work. With other allergens, for example nuts,
the sensitivity to that specific type of allergen is so, so delicate
and small that anybody could trigger a reaction with a very minute
amount and it would be impossible to set a level.
Q403 Lord Colwyn: Does this extend
beyond foods to things like ointments and toothpaste and things
that are not necessarily always ingested but could be?
Mrs Hattersley: No, the legislation applies
to food. The EU have announced that they are reviewing food labelling
and there was a suggestion that they would include non-food products
in that but I am not sure how widely that has been taken forward.
It was in their original proposal that they might look at some
other products.
Q404 Chairman: Going back to your
comment about trans dermal, were cosmetics included and all of
the so-called skincare products?
Mrs Hattersley: They are not part of the Food
Standards Agency's remit. I think they come under the Department
of Trade and Industry. There are controls on cosmetic and toiletry
products.
Mr Bailey: There is an EC Cosmetics Products
Directive which is implemented in the UK through UK legislation
and that sets out general controls over the safety of a whole
range of cosmetic products including their composition.
Q405 Baroness Perry of Southwark:
You mentioned the issue of cross-contamination and for defensive
reasons food manufacturers nowadays do tend to put "may contain
nuts" simply because there could be some cross-contamination.
It does make it very limiting for people who have allergies if
they see that on a packet. Is there anything being done to minimise
this risk of cross-contamination, for example is there any thought
of bringing in legislation or regulation to ensure that food manufacturers
have separate production lines for things which contain nuts and
things which do not.
Ms Martinez-Inchausti: First I would say that
we firmly believe that the warning should be the last resort and
that is the basis on which our members operate. We strongly believe
that a warning should not be a substitute for controls or for
good practice and we take the subject very seriously. We do not
believe it is useful for the customer to have a "may contain"
or equal warning splashed out on absolutely all the labels, so
they would only use it when there really is a risk. The area of
allergens is fairly new and I think we are all learning to see
how it should be handled and controlled; we are all learning to
understand allergens. Taking advice and gaining from the experience
of some manufacturing and retail companies that are ahead of the
game both the Food and Drink Federation and the British Retail
Consortium decided to take the initiative to write some guidance
to try to put on paper advice for other members of the industry
on best practice to control the cross-contamination or the possible
cross-contamination of allergens within industry. The most important
part is to identify where cross-contamination occurs and once
that is identified to set up control levels to try to minimise
it. There are a lot of initiatives and a lot of actions which
are taking place from training the staff, from labelling all of
the ingredients as soon as they come into the factory, segregation
of those ingredients, separating lines to changing the scheduling
of production. One example could be in chocolate manufacturing.
Chocolate manufacturers tend to produce both plain chocolate and
milk chocolate. The way it has been produced up to now is that
they would produce the milk chocolate, clean the line and then
produce plain chocolate afterwards. Simply by changing the way
in which the chocolate was produced by doing the plain chocolate
first, cleaning it and doing milk chocolate afterwards has significantly
reduced the risk of cross-contamination of milk on the plain chocolate.
There are a lot of initiatives that are taking place and we are
trying—together with the FSA who subsequently sponsored
the guidance we wrote with the help of LACORS and the Anaphylaxis
Campaign—to create awareness and help for the business gained
from experience.
Q406 Baroness Perry of Southwark:
I can see that you are doing a lot to offer guidance and so on,
but do you think there is a case for providing incentives or even
regulations which would minimise this kind of risk?
Ms Martinez-Inchausti: The labelling is certainly
being reviewed in Brussels at the moment and in the last discussions
that had with the Commission they believe that the scope of the
labelling Directive should be extended to cover consumer information
and within that scope the provisions on having to go through a
risk assessment, having certain risk management controls in place
and being able to identify whether a warning is necessary is one
of the areas they are considering to be included in future legislation.
Q407 Baroness Perry of Southwark:
There is a related issue—I speak with feeling because I
have a gluten intolerance myself; we seem to be a Committee of
people with different allergies and intolerances—in that
some manufacturers do continue to list gluten or wheat or something
in the box even when it is the kind which has already been made
exempt by the European Food Safety Authority. I suppose they feel,
in a defensive way, they need to mention that it is there. It
is very confusing when you see things like that on a package or
a box; is there not some way to make it clearer as to what you
can eat and what you cannot?
Mrs Hattersley: As Andrea said, the Agency has
worked with food manufacturers and retailers and with the consumers
and the enforcement people to produce this guidance that we published
last summer. That gives very clear advice to the businesses on
how to assess the risks of cross-contamination and try to minimise
those risks so that they only put the advisory warning on when
they cannot control the risks. I think we have to recognise that
the food chain is very long and complex in some situations, going
right back to the fields where the food is grown and the way it
is harvested and transported. There are risks of cross-contamination
very early in the food chain in some examples. What we have done
in the guidance to try to help consumers is, we have advised that
if manufacturers feel that there is a risk of cross-contamination
that they only use one or two phrases. We know that consumers
see all the different phrases like "may contain" or
"not suitable for" or "made in the same factory"
and find them very confusing because they think there are different
levels of risk and are not able to evaluate that risk. We advise
just two very simple phrases to use so that should be clearer
for the consumer.
Mr Bailey: Local authority food enforcement
officers, be they trading standards officers or environmental
health officers, visit all 600,000 registered food businesses
in the UK on a regular basis. Although we are there really primarily
looking at the statutory requirements we also advise on best practice
and so we would draw attention to the guidance document which
has been produced. Also in the course of inspections you would
be able to identify where some of the critical control points
are and the situations where cross-contamination may occur and
be able to advise the business. Hopefully that will try to reduce
down the number of examples where this defensive labelling is
used.
Dr Leitch: If I can follow on from Les's comment,
the enforcement officers are visiting the businesses but this
is a very complex area and it is very important that the enforcement
officers receive detailed training so that they are giving the
correct advice to the trade. That is my background at the minute,
training. I feel that with the best will in the world unless you
have the enforcement officers properly trained you can run into
dangers of a false sense of security where you think the businesses
are doing the right thing when they are not.
Q408 Lord Taverne: Coming back to
defensive labels and the common label "may contain nuts",
is that necessary because of the ghastly consequences or is it
not particularly helpful?
Mrs Hattersley: If there is a risk of cross-contamination,
for instance in chocolate there could be a large piece of nut
in a chocolate that is not supposed to contain nut and certainly
that amount of nut would be enough to cause a very severe allergic
reaction in some people. I think because at the moment there is
not the scientific evidence to know what threshold level of the
allergen is low enough that it is not going to trigger a reaction
in people it is very difficult to make those labelling decisions.
As I said, we have work in progress to try to help us set those
levels so hopefully in a few years' time we will be able to give
indicative levels so that if, by analysis, they show that the
risk of cross-contamination is down to a level below a certain
management level then that labelling would not need to be added.
Miss Fine: If I could add one more thing, about
confusing labelling. The Agency does investigate where there are
instances of food being mislabelled and we would issue an alert
notice if food was actually mislabelled, for example, if an ingredient
was not properly declared or if there was confusion between the
ingredients list and the allergy advice box, that food would need
to be withdrawn. We do issue advice on that.
Q409 Viscount Simon: Mr Bailey, you
used the word "regular", how regular is regular?
Mr Bailey: All inspections are based on a risk
assessment approach. There is a Food Standards Agency code of
practice directed at enforcement authorities which contains a
risk assessment scheme. Basically the more risk a business poses,
the more frequently the business is inspected. Food producing
factories producing a large number of individual items perhaps
with a lot of allergenic ingredients would be visited perhaps
once every six months or at least annually. A corner shop just
selling pre-packed sweets would perhaps be inspected once every
two or three years. It is all related to risk.
Q410 Baroness Platt of Writtle: The
European Union is currently examining how to make food labelling
clearer and more consistent. What involvement will the FSA have
in the development of new European Union legislation and will
the new regulations consider allergens?
Miss Fine: The EU is reviewing all food labelling.
Over the years various pieces of legislation have grown up in
a rather piecemeal fashion so this gives an opportunity to review
all of that and to rationalise it into one piece of legislation.
It also gives an opportunity to see what information is essential
and must be provided for consumers and other groups, and what
information could be provided elsewhere. The safety information,
which would include allergy, is a key part of that. The Agency's
role is that we are the lead UK government department on food
labelling so we will be taking forward the negotiations and as
part of that process we will be consulting with a wide range of
groups—consumers, industry and others—to look to see
what actually should be on the label and how best it should be
communicated, and also to ensure that the information which is
then provided for consumers is clear and easy to understand. There
is such a lot of information on the label at the moment and it
can sometimes be difficult for consumers and others to pick out
the information they need. It is a really good opportunity to
take a clear look at what is actually needed.
Q411 Baroness Platt of Writtle: When
will the new labelling come into force?
Miss Fine: At the moment the discussions are
at a very early stage. We are expecting proposals later this year
or the beginning of next year so there is still a lot of scope
for having consultation and discussion as to what needs to go
on the label. I cannot say exactly when we think it is going to
happen, but we are very committed to make certain there is an
improvement in the clarity and usefulness of the label.
Q412 Lord Broers: On a similar subject,
the Food Standards Agency commissioned the 2005 report Qualitative
Research into the Information Needs of Teenagers with Food Allergy
and Intolerance. One of its recommendations for food labelling
was "the introduction of a universal allergy warning symbol
on the front of packs and a more consistent, clearer approach
to the listing of risky ingredients on the back of packs".
What progress has been made towards implementing this recommendation?
Mrs Hattersley: We looked at teenagers and early
twenties because we know that this is one of the groups that is
at most risk of having allergic reactions to a food. What we were
trying to do was find out how best we can communicate information
to this age group so that they can manage their condition better.
This research was conducted in 2005 and then the changes in the
statutory legislation came in at the end of that year so there
have been improvements on the information on the back of packs.
As Gill mentioned previously the ingredients have to be declared
with reference to the allergens that they come from, so that it
has to say that casein is from milk. There is clearer information
on the back of the pack. That legislation also removed a previous
exemption in the labelling legislation which meant that if you
had a compound ingredient added to a food previously you did not
have to list all the ingredients within that compound ingredient
if it made up less than 25 per cent of the whole food. An example
would be the pepperami slices on top of a pizza. Previously you
did not have to list what was in the pepperami—it just said
"pepperami" in the ingredients list—whereas now
you also have to list all the ingredients within the pepperami.
That is clearer allergy information for those people who need
to avoid certain foods. The recommendation on the symbols was
one of the things that came out from talking to the teenagers.
Superficially it looks like a very easy way of improving labelling
but there are a lot of practical problems with symbols. Food manufacturing
is very international so it would be very difficult to introduce
symbols in one country because food is manufactured in many different
places and traded. There would need to be very clear recognition
by the consumers about what the symbols mean. At the moment we
have symbols, for example, for vegetarian food or gluten free
food suitable for coeliacs. There are symbols that can indicate
that but we would need to be very clear here. For example, if
you had a symbol with a nut on it and a line through it, does
that mean there are no nuts in the product or would it mean that
there are nuts in it so nut allergic people should not eat it?
Because of the potential severity of the reactions you would need
to have a very clear and unified system for introducing the symbol.
The other practical issue is that at the moment we have 12 allergens—soon
to go up to 14 in the list—so if we were to have symbols
for all those allergens it starts to make the packaging very complicated
again. At the moment we think that clear words on the packaging
is the best way forward but the whole question of symbols is going
to be part of this general EU review so they will look at the
usefulness of symbols in certain situations.
Q413 Lord Broers: Is this contained
in the EU considerations?
Mrs Hattersley: Yes.
Q414 Lord Broers: The report also
suggested the development of an allergy chef card which could
be prepared for young people with food allergies as a tool to
aid communication with catering establishments when eating out.
Has this idea been developed?
Mrs Hattersley: We have not taken that forward
at the moment. What we have been doing is working with all the
different stakeholders—the consumers and the caterers and
catering suppliers—to try to produce guidance on the provision
of allergen information for foods that are non-prepacked which
are outside the current statutory legislation. At the moment we
have a draft version of that guidance document which we have done
a public consultation on and we are in the process of reviewing
the responses to that. We anticipate publishing final guidance
in the autumn, so that is trying to provide better guidance to
the industry on how they provide the allergy information on the
non-pre-packed foods. We will look as well at how we advise consumers
so that they know what sort of questions to ask when they are
eating out. Certainly we have provided leaflets for allergic consumers
and for consumers with intolerances which includes a section on
when they are eating out and what sort of things they can do (ring
the restaurant beforehand, ask whether someone can supply food
that is free from the particular food they are allergic to and
how they can ask questions when they are actually in the restaurant).
We are doing work to try to help consumers and educate consumers
on how to manage their allergy when they are eating out.
Q415 Lord Broers: So these ideas
are contained in the Food Standards Agency's allergy action plan,
are they?
Mrs Hattersley: Yes, there are a number of options
we are looking at.
Q416 Chairman: Could I ask about
a situation which I think is quite specific to coeliac disease
in some ways, and that is to ask why some foods are labelled to
say they have gluten or wheat when, according to the European
Food Safety Authority, they do not? An example of that is glucose
syrup.
Mrs Hattersley: When the legislation came into
force it was realised fairly late in the negotiation process that
there were certain very highly processed food ingredients that
would no longer contain the allergenic proteins and so what the
Commission did was ask the industry to submit dossiers on those
very highly processed derived ingredients such as glucose syrup
to justify them being exempted from the allergen labelling legislation.
There is an EU Directive which sets out a list of temporarily
exempt derived ingredients so it includes the glucose syrups,
it includes some of the fining agents (there can be isinglass
or egg or milk proteins used to fine wines or beers) which are
also temporarily exempt. That exemption finishes at the end of
this year and industry is being asked to submit further information
so that a final list of exemptions can be agreed. We certainly
advise businesses that if they have one of the ingredients that
is temporarily exempt that they do not label it because, as you
say, that is confusing for the consumer and we do not want to
over-label when there is not actually a risk.
Q417 Chairman: Am I right that chewing-gum
is also exempt?
Mrs Hattersley: Chewing gum is regarded as food
so if there are allergenic ingredients they would have to be listed.[18]
Q418Lord Colwyn: Is there a third party that
checks ingredients when it comes from the manufacturers? I think
probably if I were a food manufacturer I might well put "may
contain nuts" on it just to cover myself. Does anybody check
the claimed allergens?
Dr Leitch: Normally when enforcement officers
visit the premises, particularly the manufacturers, they will
examine the labelling and they will ask the manufacturer how he
verifies the labelling and normally that is done through either
sampling and analysis or else checking the certificates provided
by the original producer of the products.
Q419 Lord Colwyn: So that is a third
party sampling.
Dr Leitch: Yes, that can be third party sampling.
The environmental health departments and the trading standards
departments have a role to play in that by testing to assess the
truth of what has been said by the manufacturer. I think the enforcement
side has a very big role there in not taking things on trust.
18 Chewing Gum-There are exemptions from most food
labelling requirements for small packages and this exemption applies
to chewing gum. However, if any of the specified allergenic ingredients
are used in chewing gum these would have to be labelled. The current
list of allergenic ingredients doesn't include latex, so there
is no requirement for this to be declared, although this list
can be amended if an additional allergenic food of public health
importance becomes apparent. Back
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