Barry Callebaut USA has recalled Kroger Value brand semi-sweet chocolate chips after chips with dairy in them were mistakenly packed in the non-dairy/Kosher pareve packaging for Kroger. The recall notice may be seen at: http://usfoodsafety.com/02af0007.asp and the kosher alert for dairy can be seen at: http://www.ok.org/alerts.asp

I’m bringing this recall to your attention since you may be aware that Barry Callebaut is the manufacturer who produces our semi-sweet mini chocolate chips and 70% dark chocolate chunks in a peanut/nut free plant and on a dairy free line. Our chocolate is manufactured in the Quebec, Canada, plant however, not in the US and is not affected by this recall.

Further, we test every incoming ingredient for several allergens prior to releasing it into the manufacturing process, with dairy being one of the many tests we perform. If we were to discover dairy in any ingredient, it would be isolated in our warehouse and not be allowed into our production area. We would then work with the manufacturer to discover the source of the contamination problem before ordering any more ingredients from them.

If you have any questions, please let our team know at info@nonuttin.com or toll free: 1-866-714-5411.

FAAMA, The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Management Act was passed into law in the United States after being signed by President Obama on Tuesday, January 4, 2011. So what does this Act mean to you as a food allergic parent?

Here is the official summary of the ACT which was introduced in February 2009:
Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop and make available to local educational agencies, schools, early childhood education programs, and other interested entities voluntary guidelines to develop plans for individuals to manage the risk of food allergy and anaphylaxis in schools and early childhood education programs. Directs that such guidelines address:
(1) parental obligation to provide the documentation of their child’s allergies;
(2) the creation of an individual food allergy management plan for each such child;
(3) communication between schools or programs and emergency medical services;
(4) reduction of exposure to anaphylactic causative agents;
(5) food allergy management training; and
(6) administration of epinephrine.
Allows the Secretary to award matching grants to assist local educational agencies in implementing such food allergy and anaphylaxis management guidelines.

What the law will actually do in its practical application remains to be seen. At the very least, this law should give parents a legal means to fall back on in EVERY state should their school/school district administration not accomodate for their child’s anaphylaxis. Further, it allows for the legal means to give epinephrine, which seems to have been a cause for confusion or inaction in schools.

While there are many teachers and administration who have been wholly supportive of anaphylaxis plans, many parents report to me that they have been treated as second-class citizens in the school system and even have had it suggested that they home school their child. While many allergic parents do pursue this option, it should be by choice, not fear or intimidation. As a former teacher, I can’t imagine that any teacher or school would be apathetic about anaphylaxis but it has been a very real issue for many around the world.

It will take some time for the voluntary guidelines and educational materials to be developed and funding to be provided for training. But in the meantime, a very important first step has been taken for those with anaphylaxis in a school setting.

Just after Christmas I heard that a Chicago teenager had died of anaphylaxis on the last day of school before the Christmas break when she had Chinese food with her classmates. These stories always make me cry because while I cannot understand what it is like to lose a child, I can tell you that I have imagined it more than once. My heart goes out to the family of this child.

From all accounts, this was a child whose parents had well-equipped her for living with her food allergies. School staff had checked on the safety of the food to be served more than once and school officials and classmates were well aware of the peanut allergy. The details have not been released so the public may never know what exactly happened. There is some question of whether epinephrine was injected. The stories indicate that it is against Illinois law for staff to administer epinephrine unless the prescription is specific to the student. If you’d like to know more, you can read the Chicago Tribune article and the Allergic Living article.

I have many questions after reading the accounts; not in the interest of assigning blame but to understand and learn about what I can do with my own child and her school. The accounts indicate that in Illinois students are not allowed to have epipens with them and teachers can’t give another’s epi-pen to a child having a reaction. To me this is highly disturbing. Is this an indication that the fear of liability trumps medically necessary action?

So now you’re wondering, okay Alana, you title says Tragedy and Hope; where’s the Hope part? While we can never bring back these children, we can use these tragedies to better protect all anaphylactic children. After a similar death in an Ontario school, we got Sabrina’s Law. Sabrina’s Law helped provide the background for my province’s anaphylaxis policy and gave allergy advocates around the world a springboard for their own country’s anaphylaxis laws and policies. I have Sara Shannon to thank for making sure that the lessons learned from her daughter Sabrina’s death would not be forgotten. My child has benefited from that advocacy.

To that end, more hope was created yesterday in the US when President Obama signed into law FAAMA. This stands for the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Management Act, a national law for all states to protect anaphylactic children in schools. Voluntary guidelines and materials will be created for states to access. You can read the information about what this law means and how it came about on the FAAN website.

I look to these developments with hope to educate all about the very real risks of anaphylaxis and to prevent any more needless deaths.

Last November I told you about an Allergy Task Force that was put together with researchers around the globe including the widely renowned Stephen Taylor from the University of Nebraska’s Food Allergy Research and Resource Program (FARRP). The task force announced this November, after a meeting in Nice, that they would have information about the threshold amounts for peanut, milk and egg by the end of 2012.

To put it into perspective, we already have a threshold for gluten which is 20 ppm (parts per million). Anything under 20 ppm is considered safe by the leading scientists in gluten research, even when taking into account eating many products under 20 ppm during the day – the cumulative effect. Following this accepted level, the government can then create labeling laws that specify the threshold and food producers follow this in the labeling/marketing of their own products. While not yet law in the US, the guideline for producers is that less than 20 ppm of gluten (wheat, barley and rye) may be labeled as “gluten free”.

So what does that mean for food allergens? The task force has already been reviewing and conducting scientific research to determine at what level food allergens must be present to create an allergic reaction. If, say, it is determined that the threshold for peanut is 10 ppm, only food products less than 10 ppm could be labeled as peanut free.

It could also help determine the “may contain” statements. Perhaps on occasion, a product tests at over 10 ppm. A food manufacturer could then put a “may contain peanut” on the label. If a product consistently tested above 10 ppm, the “may contain” may no longer be appropriate because peanut is consistently in the product so it must be labeled “contains peanut” or peanut must be placed on the ingredient list. Levels could also be used to determine what “traces” are vs containing peanut or it may be determined that labeling for “traces” is no longer appropriate and a product either contains or may contain an allergen.

Another consideration is that with advances in scientific testing, we can now test down to parts per billion of peanut protein.  But if a product tests at 1 part per billion, it may be well below a threshold but cannot be labeled peanut free.  This is sometimes why your favorite product that was safe at the grocery store last week now has a may contain label on it and you no longer trust as safe for your family.  Just because we can test for something, doesn’t mean that it is useful. 

Australians are going through this problem right now because their gluten free labeling law is not at 20 ppm but rather at the lowest level currently scientifically testable.  So products testing at 3 ppm for gluten can no longer have gluten free labeling and Celiacs are losing their ability to know what is actually safe under 20 ppm vs not allowed to be labelled.  Their Celiac Association has called for a change to the law because this has become a serious issue for their members and their quality of life.

Altogether, I feel that thresholds are a good thing. For the consumer, they won’t have to guess anymore as to what labeling means nor should they have to phone producers to double check a confusing label.  It may also mean that we have fewer consumers playing “Russian Roulette” with their food because they guess that a food manufacturer puts on a “may contain” only to cover themselves legally, when, in fact, the food may very well contain that protein.

For governments, they then have a definitive threshold that can be placed into labeling laws and therefore have the authority to recall products that are unsafe and/or conduct legal investigations and actions for producers disregarding the law.

For food producers, it means that they can also stop guessing and create specific sanitation and testing protocols for their products and food production lines.  They can also label very specifically and if indeed they are putting blanket “may contains” on all of their products, they can stop doing that and allow more of their products to become available to allergic consumers.

If you’d like to know more details about the International Task Force, who’s on it and what they are trying to achieve, you can check out this page: http://www.ilsi.org/europe/pages/tf_foodallergy.aspx

Oh I wish that I could have a dog in my house and my kids certainly agree. I love dogs so I’ve tried, oh how I’ve tried.

I’ve had my furry “nephew” come visit more than once (Kobi, the golden retriever who also has food allergies) and we’ve taken care of friends’ dogs for weekends while they’re away. I’ve stayed at friends’ houses that have all manner of dogs including the ones that are supposed to be less allergenic (less hair, yes, less saliva, no).  I watched with interest as the Obamas picked a Portuguese water dog as their family pet to mitigate their daughter’s allergies. But, alas, my asthma and congestion kicks in every time followed by catching every communicable disease around while my immune system struggles under the load.

But for those of you who don’t have to worry about the asthmatic side of allergies like me, you now have a weapon in your arsenal if you have a family history of eczema in your house and were avoiding a dog because of it. A new study suggests that having a dog can actually reduce the incidence of eczema in children before the age of 4 who were at risk of developing eczema due to family history.

Cats were also included in the study but the news was not so positive. Check out the link at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100930093229.htm

No, Megan, we still cannot have a dog to reduce your eczema but good try.

Researchers at National Jewish Health released a study in the Journal of Pediatrics on October 29 that says that many people are mistakenly avoiding foods that they believe their children are allergic to or believe is affecting eczema in their child.

Part of the problem is the difficulty in diagnosing food allergies. It turns out that a combination of patient history (including family history and previous anaphylactic attacks), skin tests, blood immunoassays and food challenges have to be assessed before a truly definitive diagnosis of food allergy can be applied. However, in practice, patients do not always go through these as part of the diagnostic process.

Add to that the fears of the food allergic and their parents, such as my child’s strong aversion to a food challenge, and you get many people who are avoiding foods unneccessarily. Check out the link to the study to see how many study participants were able to add foods back into their diets: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101104171350.htm

I always loved the quote from allergy expert Dr. Scott Sicherer in response to whether moms eating certain foods when pregnant could increase the rate of food allergies in their children, “We’ve also seen a rise in cat allergies and, as far as I know, mothers aren’t eating more cats than they used to.”

Not only did this quote make me laugh out loud when I heard it, it made me feel a whole lot better about my role in my children’s food allergies. Not so fast, it would appear.

Now Dr. Sicherer has released preliminary food allergy data that indicates that what we eat during pregnancy may indeed have an affect on the development of food allergies in our infants. When reading the article, it was like reading 100% of my own experience including milk allergies in both my daughters and quite severe eczema in my youngest.

Read the article here: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20101102/baby-peanuts-101102/

During my eldest child’s pregnancy, I ate peanut butter rarely because I found it made me nauseous. She now has no allergies. During my youngest child’s pregnancy, peanut butter was one of the few nutritious foods I could eat that didn’t make me ill and she currently has 4 food allergies and continues to have eczema. Hmm.

Dr. Sicherer does go on to say that more studies are needed to provide advice on what should be eaten during pregnancy. And obviously, for those of us who are finished our childbearing years and already have children with food allergies, the horse has escaped and there’s no closing the barn door so to speak.

Now in my forties and a little further along the food allergy path with my family, I’m not going to jump on the blame train quite as quickly as I might have in the past. Perhaps it’s also because, like any health issue, different studies often show conflicting data and so I don’t take absolutely every study as gospel truth anymore.

Besides, my husband has allergies to shellfish and I have environmental allergies, sulpha allergy, asthma and eczema, so I’m feeling we’ve got some murkiness in there. So I’m pretty content to share the blame with him, my mother’s environmental allergies, my uncle’s shrimp allergy, my grandfather’s…

When I speak to our American clients, I often hear how impressed they are with Canadian labelling. They have the erroneous impression that our laws are superior to their own. They’re wrong and we may be finding out just how much by the end of 2010.

American lawmakers passed FALCPA (Food Allergen Labelling Consumer Protection Act) in 2004 and it became mandatory in 2008. Health Canada started its process for new labelling laws a decade ago and they still haven’t been completed. In fact, an urgent letter for support from many of Canada’s allergy and Celiac support groups went out today that indicates if the proposed laws do not pass by the end of 2010, they will expire!

I realize that Health Canada is trying to be careful to address many health concerns and is listening to many stakeholders. I’ve participated in the consultation process both personally and representing Nonuttin’ Foods. But can you imagine a business or household that ran this way? Read more »

A recent study shows that 1 in 13 Canadians have a serious food allergy. This equates to over 7.6% of Canadians and does not include Celiac Disease or gluten intolerances. Perhaps it’s time that food retailers take note that this is a growing issue that is in their best interests to address beyond the peanut free labels. Read the article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/one-in-13-canadians-has-serious-food-allergy/article1715371/?cmpid=rss1

Researchers have discovered that linking specific enzymes in milk can change the proteins, leading to longer digestability.  This research was part of changing how milk proteins work in food to increase the satiety of milk products but a side effect is the potential reduction of allergic reactions.  Read more at The Food Navigator.