It’s time the FSA heeded calls for tighter ‘free from’ labelling

Just how safe is the dairy-free food and drink you’re consuming? If you have an allergy to dairy products, it’s probably best to check the small print.

Over the weekend, a report in The Telegraph warned vegan ice cream variants sold by Halo Top may, in fact, contain traces of dairy.

While the uber-cool US brand promoted its Peanut Butter and Sea Salt Caramel variants as ‘dairy-free’, the Telegraph reported the small print on the label carried a disclaimer stating: ‘This product has been processed on equipment that sometimes processes other tree nuts, milk, eggs, wheat and peanuts.’

Such mixed messages are unnecessary - and potentially dangerous.

The food industry has made great strides around allergen labelling over the past few months. ‘Natasha’s Law’, set to come into force by 2021, will require all food businesses to clearly label the full ingredients of pre-packaged food.

Despite this, loopholes and grey areas remain. ‘Dairy-free’ is a notoriously woolly segment, with a complete lack of meaningful regulation on what can and can’t be described as such.

CoYo founder Bethany Eaton has been banging the drum for tighter rules ever since her company was wrongly implicated in the tragic death of Celia Marsh in 2017. Marsh died after eating a Pret A Manger vegan sandwich that turned out to contain traces of dairy. (Pret pointed the finger at CoYo in a move that was completely “unfounded”, according to Eaton.)

“It’s a travesty brands can call their product ‘dairy-free’ when they clearly may not be,” Eaton said today, in light of the Telegraph story. “If these products are made in a dairy then they should not be called dairy-free. And you should certainly not be allowed to claim something is dairy-free and then in small print write that it may contain dairy.”

With the stakes this high, it falls on the FSA to do something about this issue. But to date it has remained resolutely on the fence.

Speaking to The Grocer in May, the regulator would not be drawn on whether it favoured legislating on ‘dairy-free’ or any other free-from claims.

It remained non-committal today, saying simply that free-from allergen claims should be used only following a “rigorous assessment of the ingredients, process and environment”.

That’s all fair and well, but assessments clearly aren’t “rigourous” enough if supposedly dairy-free products might contain traces of dairy after all - or if they are labelled in a way that confuses consumers and undermines their confidence in food labelling standards.

In light of the continued growth in free-from, this is no time for a regulator charged with protecting consumers to be mincing its words.