Legislative round-up

Cost saving ​ How to shave costs for the food industry in the event of future food safety scares are the focus of a new strategy from the UK's food agency. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is calling on the food industry to contribute comments to its Draft Incident Prevention Strategy Plan​. With a deadline of December 2010, the plan sets out a cross-agency programme to create "effective interventions to tackle food safety problems at source before they become incidents," states the FSA. The broad aims of the Incident Prevention Strategy Plan are: to learn from past incidents to ensure that past mistakes are not repeated; to identify and address the main sources of incidents; to be as prepared as possible in future to anticipate and deal with emerging, and re-emerging risks. Allergen label guidelines ​ Food industry participants must be geared up for new rules on allergen labelling due to come into force in England on 31 May 2008. Full details concerning the amendments to the Food Labelling Regulations of 1996 can be accessed here​. The regulations implement in England the European Commission Directive No. 2007/68/EC (OJ No. L310, 28.11.2007, p.11) amending Annex IIIa to Directive 2000/13/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council regarding certain food ingredients. The ingredients in question are those that are likely to cause an allergic reaction in some consumers.