Working Together to Improve Management of Patients with Food Allergy

The symposium was held on the final day of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology’s (EAACI) Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Meeting & European Consortium on Application of Flow Cytometry in Allergy (FAAM-EUROBAT) meeting in Athens, Greece. The discussions focused on the unmet labelling needs of prepackaged foods for patients with allergies, the regulatory changes under consideration for precautionary allergen labelling (PAL), and the variability in peptide profiles among extensively hydrolysed formulas (EHF) used in managing cow’s milk protein allergies. The use of voluntary PAL and its benefits and drawbacks were discussed froma patient’s perspective, including how PAL affects their ability to manage their food allergy and what improvements they feel are needed. This was followed by a presentation on the international regulations regarding food allergen labelling, which included recommendations from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and WHO expert consultation, as well as the latest draft Codex Alimentarius Committee on Food Labelling (‘Codex’) guidelines concerning risk assessment and labelling of unintended allergen presence. An example of what this will mean for the consumer when precautionary allergen labelling is aligned with the Codex draft proposal on allergen risk assessment was given, and the main challenges were discussed. Lastly, the heterogeneity of EHFs available on the market for the management of cow’s milk allergy was emphasised, with a focus on the relevance this has to the allergenicity of the product. The potential benefits of introducing more stringent standards for these products in order to better address the needs of infants with cow’s milk allergy was considered.