Irish SMS service for food allergic consumers

As in Australia and New Zealand, food products for sale in Ireland are legally required to bear declarations regarding the presence of specified allergens when these are used in the manufacture or preparation of pre-packaged food. The national Food Safety Authority in Ireland has recently launched an email and text messaging service that aims to inform food allergic consumers about products on the market that do not carry the appropriate allergy information on their labels.

Consumers must first subscribe to the service via the authority's website (www.fsai.ie). Alerts will be sent to all subscribers whenever the authority establishes that a food product is missing essential allergy information. The agency will also notify enforcement officers and the offending food businesses.

At the same time, the Irish Food Safety Authority is asking people to fill in a short online survey on its website in order to gain more information about the prevalence of food allergies in the country. The current estimate is that five percent of children and three percent of adults in Ireland have food allergies.

The full report can be read online at The Irish Times.