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POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access
FSA food allergen alerts: an analysis of trends in
reporting
Katie Waters
1*
, Rahul Chodhari
2
From Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Meeting 2014
Dublin, Ireland. 9-11 October 2014
Background
Up to 10% of the paediatric population is affected by
food allergy. Affected families face the treat of acute
life-threatening reactions, and the burden of chronic
decrease in quality of life. UK legislation exists where
allergens must be indicated on food labels; any inaccura-
cies identified must be rapidly revised, and the public
informed. This is achieved through Food Standards
Agency (FSA) allergy alerts which can be viewed on
their website; consumers may also sign up to receive
emails or SMS messages when alerts are issued.
Aim
The aim of this study is to inform health professionals
of trends food allergy reporting and to assess the acces-
sibility of this information for parents, in order to pro-
vide opportunities to improve allergen alert reporting.
Methods
Individual allergy alerts published on the FSA website
from 2011 to 2013 were analysed, alongside additional
data obtained from annual reports dating back to 2008.
Further information was gained through discussion with
parents regarding their engagement with the FSA
website.
Results
The results of the study revealed the following:
•Year-on-year increase in reporting of alerts: 53.4%
increase from 2008-2012 (Fig 1).
•Large supermarkets previously reported the majority
of allergen alerts (64% in 2011) but increasing number
of reports from small businesses mean the proportion of
reports from supermarkets has now decreased (52% in
2013).
•The majority of alerts involve milk and nuts,
accounting for 43% of reports in 2012 (Fig 2).
•Main contaminated food groups triggering alerts are
nut products, ready meals, chocolate and sweet
products.
•Alerts were found most commonly to result from
labelling errors.
•100% of small business and supermarkets recall or
withdraw their product once an alert is identified, but
supermarkets were found to be more rigorous in taking
further measures to inform and refund customers.
•Informal discussion with parents of children attend-
ing allergy clinics revealed that parents are not aware of
the information available on the FSA website.
Conclusion
Food allergy alerts (mainly involving milk and nuts) are
increasing, yet it seems consumers are not accessing
these reports. The main source of errors is incorrect
labelling, most commonly involving ready meals and
chocolate/sweet products. Dissemination of these find-
ings to retailers may result in error reduction. Informing
parents of allergy alerts may increase allergen avoidance
and improve confidence in allergen reporting, increasing
quality of life.
1
Watford General Hospital, London, United Kingdom
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Figure 1 FSA reported allergy alerts
Waters and Chodhari Clinical and Translational Allergy 2015, 5(Suppl 3):P125
http://www.ctajournal.com/content/5/S3/P125
© 2015 Waters and Chodhari; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attri bution License (http://c reativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproductio n in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver
(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made availab le in this article, unless other wise stated.
Authors’details
1
Watford General Hospital, London, United Kingdom.
2
Royal Free Hospital,
London, United Kingdom.
Published: 30 March 2015
doi:10.1186/2045-7022-5-S3-P125
Cite this article as: Waters and Chodhari: FSA food allergen alerts: an
analysis of trends in reporting. Clinical and Translational Allergy 2015 5
(Suppl 3):P125.
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Figure 2 Allergens reported in food alerts
Waters and Chodhari Clinical and Translational Allergy 2015, 5(Suppl 3):P125
http://www.ctajournal.com/content/5/S3/P125
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