Devangshu Datta: Antidote to allergies

TECHNO BEAT

I get to taste the cake at approximately one out of every eight birthday parties that I attend. I have a chocolate allergy and choc seems to be flavour of choice on seven out of eight occasions.

Chocolate is easy to identify; hence easy to avoid. Life is much tougher for those who suffer from allergies to common food items like milk, wheat, legumes, citrus, egg and eggplant. These are used in all sorts of products and it isn't necessarily obvious at first or even second glance whether a given food product contains these.

It is especially difficult when food comes pre-packaged "" as in pickles, instant noodles, cornflakes, shortbread, balchow or pasta sauce. Deciphering the label on a can is a daunting task for anyone without a background in organic chemistry.

Something that contains milk might list it as "lactose" or "caseine" or "lactosealbumen". There are 20 such names for ingredients derived from peanuts. Even "permitted colours or preservatives" and "natural flavours" may include allergens.

Current label laws don't require the listing of ingredients that constitute less than 25 per cent of a food product. Yet even a trace of an allergen can trigger reactions. Ignorance in decoding labels, or labels that gloss over the presence of allergens can lead to an unpleasant night at hospital. In severe cases, it is a matter of life and death.

A significant minority suffers from allergies to common food items. According to European medical associations, some 8 per cent of children and 3 per cent of adults suffer from food allergies or intolerance. Some 11 million Americans "" that's a little over 3 per cent of the 290-million population "" are registered as allergic to one or more items such as milk, egg, wheat, soya, tree nuts (hazelnut and walnut), peanut (which is a legume) and fish/seafood. About 250,000 people are treated annually in US emergency rooms for allergies.

Extrapolating from these statistics, perhaps 30 million to 40 million Indians have problems with food allergies. Also practising Jains, Muslims, Jews and Hindus need assurances that a packaged item doesn't contain ingredients that they abjure.

Governments are gradually waking up to the problem. Starting January, 2006, a new US law called the "Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act" will make it mandatory for food items to use "natural-language" labels that list the eight items given above and plug loopholes relating to allergens creeping into "natural flavours".

The Euro-11 is going one step further with allergen labelling. It has a similar law that lists 12 common allergens. The new rules will come into force in November, 2004, across the Euro area, although manufacturers will be given a year to comply with the new directives. The labelling applies to cereals containing gluten, fish, crustaceans, eggs, peanuts, soy, milk and dairy products, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame seed and sulphites.

There is a certain amount of controversy about labelling in the case of non-allergenic derivatives. For example, soya is an allergen; refined soya oil is not. Will food manufacturers using refined soya oil have to label it and, thus, lose potential business?

Unfortunately, while a broad consensus is developing on food labelling with respect to allergens, there are more divided attitudes to the labelling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) which include a broad category of food, animal-feed, crop-seeds and drugs. The US has fiercely resisted labelling GMOs, while the Europeans insist on this.

The US propagates the premise of "Substantial Equivalence", which argues that GMOs are as safe as non-GM ones unless specifically proved otherwise. The EU (and most of the developing world) support the "Precautionary Principle" embodied in the Cartagena Protocol.

It argues that a GMO should be considered risky until proved to be safe. Without enforced labelling, a comprehensive testing programme is impossible given the pace and scale of global trade. This has frightening implications for biosafety.