Clearing up food labels

Common ingredients in many foods can be harmful, even life-threatening, to people with allergies. Yet it is difficult to know if those ingredients are in many packaged foods just by reading the label. That's what makes a bill pending in Congress so important to millions of Americans.

The bill, called the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act, would require a listing of the eight major allergens contained in a product. They are peanuts, nuts, fish, shellfish, eggs, milk, soy and wheat. The bill would require common names for ingredients rather than obscure terminology. For example, whey, casein and lactoglobulin would be listed as what they are: milk.

This is no small matter. Some 11-million Americans suffer from food allergies, and for them the result of eating even a small amount of the wrong thing can range from discomfort to anaphylactic shock, which can lead to death. There is no known cure.

"Food-allergic consumers depend on food labels to make life-and-death decisions, yet they are forced to crack a code of complicated scientific terms for every food product they eat," said Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., the bill's main House sponsor. Each year, as many as 250 people die and 30,000 require emergency treatment because of food allergies, she said.

Under the bill, not only would labels be understandable even to children, but catchall listings of ingredients such as "natural flavorings" would have to be specific. A couple of key food issues would not be resolved by the bill, but they would be advanced. The Food and Drug Administration would be required to address the problem of "cross contact" of foods, in which one food comes into contact with another that contains allergens during processing. And the agency would also be required to define what constitutes a "gluten-free" product.

Resistance to this legislation from the food industry has largely evaporated. The big producers such as Kraft and General Mills already adhere to similar voluntary labeling guidelines. The Senate has passed the bill and it should come up for a vote in the House in the next week or two.

Consumers have not fared well recently in congressional decisions on food labeling. The "country of origin labeling" law that would have informed consumers of where meat and produce originated was recently delayed for two years and is in jeopardy. There is no excuse for withholding basic information from consumers, however, especially those whose lives are at stake if they unknowingly eat the wrong food.

[Last modified July 12, 2004, 23:51:21]