The Weist family knows firsthand just how serious a food allergy can be.
“My daughter is three and she is allergic to peanuts and sunflower seeds,” Elani Weist said. “My son has had more than 25 epinephrine injections and has been hospitalized three times. I, myself, have a shellfish allergy.”
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WATCH HERENavigating food labels can be especially challenging, Weist said.
“Almost daily I get questions from my son’s school and my daughter’s daycare about the labels,” she said. “Sometimes it’s something like, ‘made in a facility’ and then there’s confusion, ‘well, is this really safe? What do we do?’”
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At the beginning of January, the FDA issued updated food allergen labeling guidance in a lengthy Q&A document covering a wide range of topics from how to declare allergens contained in spice mixes, to which specific tree nuts the agency considers to be major food allergens to whether foods packaged for airlines and other transportation carriers are subject to allergen labeling requirements. The agency recognizes milk, eggs, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, sesame, fish, shellfish and tree nuts as the top nine major food allergens.
“I think this is a really big step forward,” said Dr. Sung Poblete, CEO of Food Allergy Research and Education, a national advocacy group. “I think there’s still much work to be done.”
Dr. Poblete said there are more than 33 million people in the U.S. living with life-threatening food allergies, calling it a silent public health epidemic. She said she was most concerned about the impact of inaccurate food labels.
“If you’ve seen some of the deaths that have occurred and that have been on the news, it’s mislabeling of packaging that we’ve seen,” Dr. Poblete said. “Those are human errors. With the technology that we have today, there’s ways for us to, I think, circumvent that.”
In the document, the FDA says its guidance does not “establish legally enforceable responsibilities” and instead describe the agency’s “current thinking on a topic and should be viewed only as recommendations, unless specific regulatory or statutory requirements are cited.”
NBC6 contacted the FDA to ask questions about the guidance. The agency sent the following statement in response:
"HHS has issued a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health. This is a short pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization. There are exceptions for announcements that HHS divisions believe are mission critical, but they will be made on a case-by-case basis."
To read the updated guidance click here.
