European Parliament reviews allergen labelling amendments

In June 2010, the European Parliament adopted a draft regulation on the provision of food information to consumers. The proposal includes the extension of allergen labelling to food that is not pre-packed, plus improved labelling for trace amounts of allergens in foods.

The proposal for a new EU Regulation was put forward more than two years ago, with the purpose of merging, simplifying and amending the provisions of two existing EU Directives that deal with the broad range of labeling and advertising aspects of foods. Upon adoption, the new Regulation will be directly applicable in all EU Member States and will help create uniform food labelling rules throughout the European Union.

A proposed amendment that would have seen the development of European guidelines on allergen management to regulate precautionary "may contain" labelling was not adopted. However, Amendment 18 that was adopted into the current draft requires the development of common rules for labelling the presence of traces of allergenic substances. While drawing up such common rules is likely to be a complex and lengthy task, it will help improve the regulation of precautionary labelling of allergens.

Further requirements relating to allergen labelling are included in Amendment 34 of the current draft. This requires that information concerning potential allergens in food which is not prepacked and mass catering services should always be available to the consumer. The proposed text stating such information should always be provided to the consumer was not accepted.

The European Council on the provision of food information to consumers will take position in a few months. However if any further amendments are made these must also be presented to the European Parliament. It is therefore likely there will be a second reading sometime next year. Once agreed, larger food producers will have three years to comply with the new regulations, and firms with fewer than 100 employees will have five years to do so.

Reports on the proposed regulation, as well as the adopted amendments can be accessed via the European Parliament website.