The vegan/allergy labelling issue

Image courtesy of Hooley & Brown

In theory the huge growth in the number of vegan products on the market should be a massive bonus for those with milk or egg allergies. But – because so many of them come with PAL/May Contain warnings for milk and egg, it has also been a cause of great frustration and no small degree of acrimony.

But it is a tricky issue. Vegans and the allergy community are coming from very different places. And then there is the food industry – with a whole different set of priorities – and the regulators/enforcers who have to police the territory.

At a very interesting seminar organised by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute last week it soon became clear that there are basically four players involved.

Vegans

Veganism is a philosophy which eschews the use animal products in foods, in cosmetics or toileteries, in clothing or in any walk of life.

They have a well used trademark (established in 1990 with around 70,000 products registered globally) and a rigorous testing process to ensure that there is no animal testing and no knowing use of animal products.

However they are not an allergen label and while they state that ‘cross contamination must be prevented as far as possible’, unintentional cross contamination is not a concern for them and does not invalidate their certification.

To change their certification to a totally allergen free one would be a massive and expensive undertaking for them – and one they they do not feel that vegans want or need.

The allergy community

The allergy community are, obviously, delighted with the increase in the number of interesting milk and egg free products on offer, and proportionately frustrated to find that they cannot eat a great many of them (or if they do so they risk a reaction) because they carry PAL/may contain warnings.

They believe that ‘freefrom animal products’ should mean just that and that vegan products should therefore be contamination free and not need to carry precautionary warnings.

The industry

The industry is torn.

Although plant-based/vegan does now seem to have peeked it is none the less a very substantial section of the market. And increasingly, so is the allergy community.

However, ensuring that all vegan/plant based products were manufactured in such a way as not to need to carry precautionary allergen warnings would be a significant manufacturing step change with all the cost implications that would entail.

Is the allergen market lucrative enough to justify that expense and that amount of disruption?

The enforcers

The first speaker at the the CTSI seminar was Jess Merrifield, a senior trading standards officer, who made it very clear that TSOs were on the front line in this particular dispute and were not happy with the situation.

As far as they are concerned, the crucial issue is the fact that there is no legal definition of vegan making it very difficult for them to police the area at all. In fact, there is no legal definition of any food custom which results from a life style choice: vegan, halal, vegetarian, pescaterian etc.

This is of course also a major problem as far as the food industry is concerned. With no legal definition, the industry has no standards to work to, and no certainty as to their legal liability.

It is also massively confusing as far as the consumer is concerned, 75% of whom think that vegan should mean totally animal product free. And that is before you take into account food allergics who obviously have an extra vested interest in vegan products being totally animal free.

As far as Trading Standards are concerned the situation is just as bad, if not worse, with PAL. Again, there is no legal definition so industry has no standards to work to and the consumer has no way of knowing whether or not to trust what it is telling them. Moreoever, it is often incorrectly used which only serves to further undermine consumer confidence. There is not even any helpful guidance available from the FSA or anyone else – although this may be about to change.

So where to go?

There is of course one course of action that would cut through all of this confusion, make the philosophical differences between vegans and allergy sufferers irrelevant and enormously simplify the lives of both food manufacturers and the enforcers – and that is if Precautionary Allergen Labelling could be legally defined and made mandatory.

Legally defining PAL requires agreement on the level of allergen that it is ‘safe’ for a product to include without causing a reaction in all but the most sensitive of allergy sufferers – the same principle as the 20ppm which is currently the legal limit for gluten. Codex, the EU and innumerable national bodies continue to work on this, following in the footsteps of the Australian VITAL program which set some basic parameters for all the major allergens nearly 20 years ago – but progress is glacial.

If only these definitions could be agreed and made mandatory, all of the other issues would fall away. At that point industry and the regulators would have an enforceable standard to which they could work – while the consumer, be they allergic, vegan or nothing at all, could have faith that when a product carried a ‘may contain’/precautionary allergen warning there was a genuine risk of allergen contamination and, if they are allergic, they should avoid it.

Roll on the day……