Food allergens, sulphites, and gluten sources can pose serious health problems for some consumers, sometimes even causing death. Food manufacturers and importers must ensure that their products are labelled properly so consumers can make safe food choices.
You can reduce incidents of illness and impacts on your company, such as food recalls, caused by undeclared allergens by:
- identifying food allergens that are used in or come into contact with your products
- putting an allergen prevention and control plan in place
- ensuring allergens are properly declared on labels
Tips to prevent undeclared allergens
Identify
By identifying all potential sources of allergens, you can manage how they are used in food products and prevent cross-contamination. Here are a few ways to identify allergens at your facility or in the products you import:
- be aware of which allergens, sulphites, and gluten sources must be declared on a food label
- review all ingredients you use to determine whether they contain allergens
- identify and control areas in your facility where allergen cross-contamination may occur
- clearly mark ingredients that contain allergens and store them in separate, designated areas
- require your suppliers to demonstrate allergen controls and check labels and formulations on new shipments
Prevent and control
Having an allergen prevention and control plan can help prevent cross-contamination and mislabelling of food products. Here are a few ways to prevent and control allergens:
- have clear procedures in place for receiving, producing, handling, and moving products and ingredients that contain allergens
- where possible, use separate processing lines, rooms or facilities to handle products and ingredients that contain allergens
- establish and follow effective cleaning procedures
- train staff to ensure they understand allergen control procedures
- keep records that show the steps you took to avoid the presence of undeclared allergens
- maintain up to date information on ingredients supplied, formulas and labelling
Declare
Proper allergen labelling is the only way consumers with food allergies and sensitivities can know if a food is safe for them to eat. It is your responsibility to ensure that food products are properly labelled. Here are a few ways to ensure that you are declaring all allergens:
- establish a process to check the accuracy of your labels and declare all allergens present in a product
- make sure all allergens in a product are declared in the list of ingredients (see full requirements for the declaration of ingredients and allergens within the List of ingredients and allergens page) or in a "Contains" statement. The "Contains" statement must appear:
- immediately after a warning statement to the effect that aspartame contains phenylalanine (if the food contains aspartame), or
- immediately after the list of ingredients if the food does not contain aspartame
- if a "Contains" statement is used, it must list all allergens present in the food, regardless of whether they are already in the list of ingredients
- declare all allergens regardless of which generation of an ingredient they appear in
- an example - hamburgers contain barbecue sauce (first generation); an ingredient in the barbecue sauce is seasoning (second generation); and an ingredient in the seasoning is soy (third generation). Therefore, soy must be declared in the ingredient list or in a "Contains" statement because it is an allergen present in the food.
- use the prescribed source names to declare allergens in the list of ingredients and in the "Contains" statement, if applicable. The prescribed source name is a regulated term by which an allergen is commonly known. For example, seafood must be declared by using the common name of the fish, such as "tuna" or "halibut"; of the crustacean, such as "crab" or "shrimp"; or of the mollusc, such as "oyster" or "clams"
- apply a cross-contamination statement when the unintentional presence of an allergen is unavoidable, despite having taken all reasonable preventive and control measures. Health Canada and the CFIA recommend using the following cross-contamination statement: "May contain [X]" where [X] is the name of the allergen. The food allergen and gluten prescribed source names may be used in the cross-contamination statement. Other names are also acceptable, such as "fish" instead of the prescribed source name (the common name) of the fish. The use of the name "tree nuts" is also acceptable for almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios and/or walnuts in the cross-contamination statement.
Learn more
For more information on allergen labelling please visit: