On April 28^th, a petition was launched to legally require food companies to add a cross-contamination warning to any food that is produced along the same lines or may come in contact with one of the United States declared top 8 food allergens.

Current Law

Current law already requires food products moderated by the FDA to be clearly labeled if the actual ingredients contain any of the top 8 food allergens in any form, including food ingredients derived from one of these top 8 food allergens.

This saves food allergic consumers a lot of time and energy when shopping for foods that are safe for them, as remembering a long list of ingredients that pose a possible risk can feel overwhelming, especially when the shopper is dealing with lists of ingredients for more than one food allergy.

Proposed Law

Current law, however, does not require cross-contamination warnings on any products if foods were produced on shared equipment of an allergen or other possibilities of cross-contamination exist.

Many companies provide these warnings voluntarily, which prevents a flood of phone calls from consumers as each individual at risk of cross-contamination of an allergen attempts to contact food manufacturers to determine if the food is safe for them to consume.

It Makes Sense

With the continued rise of people facing these risks, it simply makes sense for food to provide such warnings from the concept of time and money saved by both food manufacturing companies and the end consumer.  After all, these companies already have procedures in place to check the ingredients of all of their products for the presence of the top 8 food allergens.

Even manufacturers that voluntarily provide such labels, however, are not free from floods of phone calls.  Unless the manufacturer makes the further effort to label every product that is free from the risk of contamination as such, the consumer will still question the product with the manufacturer.

Time and Money Saved For Everyone

Having a law requiring cross contamination labels means that consumers can automatically deem safe any product which does not have cross-contamination labels or food allergy labels of any kind, meaning they no longer feel the need to call the manufacturer to double-check, saving both the consumer and the manufacturing company valuable time.

To reach it’s goal, the petition needs to receive a total of 100,000 signatures by May 28^th.  Go ahead and add your signature to the petition today.