From 20-22 March, we participated in the World Allergen Food, a fair of products suitable for people with food allergy, intolerance and coeliac disease, coupled with a scientific conference. EFA Senior EU Policy Advisor Savli Roberta moderated a round table on the challenges and barriers for the correct diagnosis of allergic patients and analysed the situation of the implementation of the EU legislation on allergen labelling.
In our presentation, we outlined the patients’ priorities in the implementation of the new regulation on food information to consumers that entered into force in December 2014regulation. For EFA, there is need to regulate “may contain” labelling for pre-packed food, to ensure proper information on allergens in non-pre-packed products is given to allergic consumers and to harmonise the pictograms of the 14 allergens identified in Europe.
We also underlined the need to have a coordinated (from general practitioners to medical specialists) and patient-centred approach (from pharmacists to patients) to ensure early diagnosis and quality care.
Two of our members, Food Allergy Italia (part of the scientific committee) and Federasma e allergie Onlus, also participated in the fair and provided the perspective of allergic people.
Other speakers gave an overview of the prevalence of food allergy in Europe, with increasing incidence over the last ten years. There were presentations about immunotherapy and other innovative treatments to manage food allergy and discussions around the need to establish safe thresholds for allergens.
The World Allergen Fair Scientific Committee was organised by Prof Muraro, President of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI), with the support of the Italian scientific societies for medical doctors and allergologists (FNOMCEO, SIAAIC, SIAIP and AAITO).
To know more about the event please visit the World Allergen Fair website.
Interested in knowing more about our participation in this fair? Please read Roberta Savli’s blog entry.