Clear labels pushed for food allergens

Regulators debate setting standards for what ingredient lists should say

WASHINGTON -- It's one of the biggest frustrations with food allergies: The hodgepodge of warnings that a food might accidentally contain the wrong ingredient.

The warnings are voluntary -- meaning there's no way to know whether foods that don't appear on the labels really should. And labels are often vague: Is "may contain traces of peanuts" more helpful 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 so confused they're starting 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, almost 8, is allergic to peanuts, dairy, wheat and five other ingredients. But she doesn't find that practical, and she repeatedly has spotted longtime favorite foods suddenly bearing new warnings that say accidental contamination is possible after all.

McCabe, who is a law professor, questions how often the warnings signal liability protection rather than true risk.

"What does this really mean? Can I count on it, as a consumer, to really have any meaning?" she asks.

The Food and Drug Administration will ask those questions and others at a Sept. 16 public hearing, 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 acknowledged.

Canadian authorities have gone a step further, saying accidental-allergy warnings are "misleading consumers" and advising food makers to begin clarifying them, even as Health Canada researches a formal policy.

The food industry recognizes that there is confusion. The Grocery Manufacturers of America has been working to set new guidelines 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 have the potential for a mix-up.

More foods bear precautionary labels, but there's a disconnect. The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, a consumer group, counts at least 30 ways that the warnings are worded. Consumers too often falsely assume, it says, that one food is riskier than another because its label sounds scarier.

FDA surveys found the allergic pay more attention to warnings that a food "may contain" an allergen than the "made in the same factory" labels.

Yet when University of Nebraska researchers tested nearly 200 products with accidental-peanut warnings, they found that peanuts were more likely to have sneaked into products labeled "made in the same facility."

Health Canada researchers recently discovered that some chocolate labeled as possibly containing "traces" of peanuts or tree nuts in fact contained as much as six times the amount that the government considers a trace level.

Contributing to consumer mistrust are even more puzzling warnings. Last week, allergy network founder Anne Munoz-Furlong was stunned to receive a basket of fresh fruit with a warning that it might contain nuts or milk. "Right now, everybody's making up their own rules," she says.