This week Bosco Santimano, founder and executive director of social enterprise You Can Cook, shares his thoughts on food labelling.
Recent headlines in the media demonstrated the need for food labelling on all prepared and cooked foods in restaurants, take-aways and supermarkets selling ready meals/ready to use sauces, etc. No one should die because they ate food, that had an ingredient that was not meant to be, in the food, in the first place! There have been too many cases of individuals losing their lives while eating out and this has to stop.
Owen Carey, a young man died while out celebrating his 18th birthday in 2017 when he ordered a chicken burger at a famous burger chain. Owen informed staff about his allergy but was not told that the dish contained buttermilk, the hidden ingredient that proved fatal, as he was allergic to dairy. Owen suffered a severe anaphylactic shock after eating only half the chicken and feeling his lips tingling and experiencing stomach problems. He collapsed under an hour later never to wake up again.
A similar case happened to Natasha Ednan-Laperouse who died in 2016 after an allergic reaction to a Pret A Manger baguette which contained sesame seeds!
Currently the law states that as a food business you must follow the allergen information rules set in EU Food Information for Consumers Regulation. This means that you must;
- Provide allergen information to the consumer for both pre-packed and non-prepacked food or drink
- Handle and manage food allergens adequately
Food establishments also need to make sure that all staff are trained about allergens. By law you also need to tell your customers if any food products you sell or provide contain any of the main 14 allergens as an ingredient. Some of the 14 allergens are: celery; cereals containing gluten; crustaceans – such as prawns, crabs and lobsters; eggs; fish; lupin; milk; molluscs – such as mussels and oysters; mustard; tree nuts – including almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts; peanuts; sesame seeds; soybeans; sulphur dioxide and sulphites (if they are at a concentration of more than ten parts per million). As you can see it’s a complicated process and more needs to be done to reduce the risk to consumers.
One question that no one is asking is why are so many people having allergies and intolerances to food? Experts have various opinions about this but some independent Scientists and researchers have pointed the finger at our over use of chemicals, fertilisers and pesticides since the 1950’s! Plus the use of synthetic, laboratory made products that have been added to food to increase its shelf life along with additives to increase our consumption of processed foods. Plus can the Tories guarantee that they will not dilute or remove existing laws that were set up by the EU to protect consumers all over Europe?
As an organisation, we set out to focus on cooking food from scratch, as this is the only way to know what truly is in your food. Let’s all get back to basics and take back control of our health from the food lobby.
*Originally written & published in the Peeblesshire News.