The UK House of Lords has debated the Science and Technology Committee's report on Allergy which was published in September 2007. The Government responded to the report in November last year and accepted many of the Committee's recommendations. The debate aimed to give the Committee the opportunity to question the Government on how far they have got in implementing these recommendations.

In a recent seminar published in the Lancet medical journal, a food allergy expert at Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina claims some type of immunotherapy to offset peanut allergy will be available in five years. This theory is based on the number of different studies that are currently being conducted.

Lists of allergens that require labelling were originally drawn up on the basis of a combination of prevalence and severity information. Since then the number of allergenic foods for which reactions have been well documented has grown considerably. The Food Allergy Task Force of the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) Europe has recently reviewed the criteria for identifying allergenic foods of public health importance.

FACTA Australia has recently achieved NATA accredited status for gluten testing using the Ridascreen Gliadin test kit, which has Codex approval. This status allows the addition of the NATA symbol to relevant test reports, demonstrating the tests have been conducted in accordance with a prescribed quality management system.

The European Council plans to revise the EU Novel Food Regulation to bring it up to date and clarify the scope. However, the UK’s Food Standards Authority (FSA) has expressed concern that revisions currently being considered fail to take proper account of potential allergic responses to some novel foods.

Researchers at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center are currently conducting a feeding trial on peanut- and egg-allergic people. By increasing doses of protein extract from the foods, they aim to see if they can induce the participants' immune systems to tolerate the food.