Food legislation and the protection of allergic and hypersensitive persons: an overview

So far there are worldwide no legal instruments in protecting people against adverse allergic reactions to the consumption of foods. Instruments, which generally were developed for health protection in food legislation, are not suitable to regulate the protection of allergic persons because they automatically would exclude all protein-containing foods from commercial market. The only approach to an effective protection is to indicate the presence of adverse effect causing agents or ingredients on the label. This preventive instrument was developed by the Codex Alimentarius and led to an open “hit list” of ten Major Serious Allergens, which have to be labeled. The hit list principle was adopted by the EU-Commission as a draft for an EC-Directive. Unsolved problems are exeptions from the labeling requirement for refined oils and a minimum limit of adverse effect causing agents which do not require labeling.