RESEARCH: Allergy declarations and PAL

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has published a research report about allergen declarations and precautionary allergen labelling on food labels:

Allergen declaration findings

• Repetition of consistent allergen information in different places on a product label helps consumers identify allergens and to comprehend that information.
• Formatting played an important role in the communication of allergen information on food labels. To highlight the presence of allergens, consumers generally preferred enlarged font size, emboldening (use of bold font) and a contrasting font colour (among other styles).
• Consumers preferred allergen information to be placed in a consistent location, in a consistent format, because it enables faster and easier identification of allergen information.
• Consumers perceived a lack of consistency in the terminology used across different food labels, and even on the same label. Overly scientific and/or vague terms were problematic and led to consumer confusion and uncertainty about which foods are safe to consume.

Precautionary allergen labelling (PAL) findings

• Consumers viewed PAL statements such as ‘may contain’, ‘may be present’, ‘made in a factory that also processes’, etc. as unhelpful and confusing, and that they ultimately restrict rather than enable safe food choices.
• While many food-allergic consumers avoided food with PAL, others reported consuming products labelled with these warnings at least some of the time. Attention to, and avoidance of, products carrying precautionary statements may differ depending on how affected a person is by a food allergy, though the evidence for this was mixed.
• Certain forms of precautionary statements were less likely to be ignored by food-allergic consumers than others. This is despite there being no directive for PAL phrasing to correspond to the different levels of allergen cross-contact risk present. In addition, the statements less likely to be ignored did not correspond to those considered by food-allergic consumers to be most helpful when making a purchasing decision.
• Very few studies explored consumer perspectives on PAL outside of statement phrasing, but those that did found food-allergic consumers supported heightened oversight of PAL usage.

A&AA is hopeful that this research will lead to allergen labelling that makes it easier for people who live with food allergies to make safe choices.