There are big changes in the information that a care service, registered as a food business, will have to give their service users about allergens.
From 13 December 2014, the EU Food Information for Consumers Regulations comes into force. There are 14 major allergens which must now be identified – cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphur dioxide, lupin and molluscs.
Services will have to supply information for every item on the menu including snacks and drinks that contain any of the 14 Allergens as ingredients. Details of these allergens will have to be listed clearly in an obvious place such as a menu, wipeboard or information pack
For more information, visit http://www.food.gov.uk/business-industry/allergy-guide
A leaflet containing all the relevant information can be found at http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/multimedia/pdfs/publication/allergy-leaflet.pdf
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has communicated this new information via their website and a consultation process has taken place. All local authorities were advised of the new regulations on June 23.
The Care Inspectorate signposts services to catering Best Practice Guidance which advises that services should have standard recipes for the dishes they are producing. As the recipie states exactly what goes in to each dish this could be used to check for presence of the 14 allergens. If any of their dishes have prepackaged food, it will be labelled with the details.