I believe nut allergy is far more common in the UK; it's the most common food allergy by a long way. It kills people, not a lot but frankly if that was my mother, husband, sister or son I'd be keen they weren't!
Allergies are indeed more common in UK, but the Netherlands are not far behind.
I recently joined a presentation from an allergy consultant. She was allergic herself. I always find these presentation quite shocking. for me, there were 2 new things in this presentation:
1) traces to be effected are always given in ppm. I do not have any picture for ppm. She told us that it was a spoon on a big bag. That is quite a picture that I can use and explain to others.
2) it is not true that peanut and nut allergy are worser then others. Depending on the person and the products, persons can also die from other allergens. It is also not true that the amount of traces for effect is smaller for peanuts.
There was some recent research published by the FSA on people's attitudes if they have a food allergy and it found that 'may contain' statements were largely ignored.
Of course they do! Whaty should they do else?
Since it is legal to declare the 14 allergens and to make sure that cross contamination is excluded from your production facility, producers started to declare allergens as 'may contain'. Just to prevent receiving claims and to get rid of their responsibility.
For persons suffering from allergy, these 'may contain' claims are the worst. In earlier days they eat this product and did not had any problems with it or they know from experience they better not eat the product. Nowadays, a lot of companies claim 'may contain'. And 'may contain' includes allergens on site, but not in the product, but also includes allergen indicated as 'may contain' in one of the ingredients. So, it is unclear what kind of information 'may contain' is, and the persons suffering from an allergy are not helped with this claim. This claim is only for companies.
I have seen companies taking no responsibilities at all and just claiming alle allergens as 'may contain'. These companies exclude allergenic people to be customer of their products. Thinking in a commercial way: excluding 3% of the population might be cheaper then the costs of a recall and the lost of confidence after a recall..
So the allergy persons are back to the beginning and have to make a risk assessment themselves for each product they are buying and eating. Just like they use to do before.
Globalising food processing also confuses these persons. I have seen examples of a global chocolate brand with several processing locations. A specific product was produced in two different plants in different countries in Europe. The name and label of the product was the same, except for the may contain claim, because in the first factory nuts and peanuts were handled and the second factory was nut free. Mostly allergenic people remember the brands and products that hey can eat. On the packaging no reference is made to the processing plant.
it makes sense for the most common food allergy to ban it completely where it's not an ingredient. This is because it's easy to do. How much hassle is it really to say to people "have a Mars bar not a Snickers"?
I think it is just very hard to do and how far should you go?
If you, GMO, as an expert, did not knew that Baklava contains nuts, how would you expect that some one, who has no mother, sister, brother, father, uncle, etc. with allergen experience, will know this and will understand the risks?
For peanut butter, peanuts, snickers, nuts, etc. it is clear not to eat it, but how about other products? How about Nutella? How about the candy bar that is produced in the line next to the snickers? How about products still to be developed? There are people who do not know that sesame crackers are made from sesame or tacos from mais.
It will work if you have only own workers and train them very well. But how about these temporary workers from agencies? How about the young worker, whose lunch is made by his mother?
On the other hand --> nut free is certainly much much much better then 'may contain'.
It just seems so awful hard to implement and maintain.
