Like the guest who finally turns up for dinner just as you’re clearing the dessert plates, Canada’s breweries last month showed up to bellyache about the proposed gluten and allergen labeling regulations.

What’s amazing is that Health Canada and the Prime Minister’s Office didn’t just send this nervy latecomer home with a foil swan.

In Canada, we’ve been pioneers in “considering” label rules that would clearly identify food allergen and gluten in sources on packaged foods. Consultations on the issue began in earnest in 1996, the same year that Atlanta hosted the Olympic Summer Games; the year a young Alanis Morissette swept the Grammys.

In the 15 intervening years, all the consulting, revising, reviewing and re-revising by the food and beverage industry, distillers, bureaucrats, allergy groups, doctors and celiac associations was supposed to have finished.

In July 2008, Tony Clement, then our Health Minister, promised the regulations to millions of Canadians who live with food allergies and celiac disease. The label regulations were finally accepted by all stakeholders in February 2010; they were good to go. And they did complete one stage of the process.

There was just a second stage left to pass. But then the regulations sat, stalled at Treasury Board. The allergy and celiac communities began lobbying again in December with an open letter to the Prime Minister and an online write-in campaign.

Just as the current Health Minister, Leona Aglukkaq wrote back promising the regulations would pass in “early 2011,” the brewers came to Ottawa, guns blazing.

“It was very disheartening to receive a letter from the Health Minister reaffirming her commitment to this issue only to learn a few days later from the Prime Minister’s Office that an exemption was being considered for the beer industry,” said Laurie Harada, Anaphylaxis Canada’s executive director.

No kidding. We have the cooperation and sign-off of all the foodmakers, liquor makers, cake bakers, you name it – and now the brewers want another delay? The regulations were considered close to expiration date from neglect last winter. What will further delay do? If a spring election does occur, it will be back to the drawing board.

How do we lose this guest? Where is the foil? This party was meant to be a wrap.

In this community, we depend on clear labels for the basics of eating and drinking. We grow weary of being patient. We tire of avoiding food upon food in the grocery store because of mystery ingredients like “natural flavours,” “spices” or “hydrolyzed protein” (Is HP soy? wheat? corn? milk? Answer: any of the above). We just want to know what’s in our food and drink. And you know what? Even non-allergic Canadians are beginning to demand the same.

Our community remains resolved to seeing these regulations through despite the protracted battle to get the job done. What the beer companies and the prime ministerial advisers don’t seem to get is this simple fact: we need those labels; they are not optional.

Next Steps:

Let’s keep the pressure on the government to pass these regulations. We can win this yet. But we need to stay vocal now.

1. If you haven’t sent your letter via the write-in campaign, please do so now – here. We’ve gathered over 8,700 letters in total from Round 1 and 2 of this campaign. And the tally is growing.

If you have sent a letter, thanks for the support! Can you think of anyone else who would take part? (It’s not just for those living with allergies or celiac, any supporter can send a letter.)

2. The groups in the campaign have now written a letter to all Members of Parliament, asking them to press the Prime Minister to pass the regulations. See it here and send it to your MP, too.

3. Call the Prime Minister’s Office, and let them know how much you and your family need these regulations: 613-992-4211.

4. Anaphylaxis Canada has started an intriguing quiz “What’s in Your Beer”. You may be surprised to learn of some potential ingredients. Again, show your friends, take the quiz, spread the word.

The department has announced interim guidelines to food manufacturers that end exemptions for undeclared, “hidden ingredients” in packaged foods. So when a seasoning, flour or margarine is an ingredient of a packaged food’s ingredients and contains a priority allergen – that allergen will now need to be named on the label. Similarly, previously vague ingredients such as “hydrolyzed protein” or “natural flavour” will now have to specify if they contain top allergens. (The priority allergens are: peanut, tree nut, milk, egg, soy, wheat, fish, shellfish, sesame and sulphites.)

Samuel Benrejeb Godefroy, director of the bureau of chemical safety for Health Canada’s Food Directorate, announced the interim guidelines at the Governors’ Foundation’s International Conference on Food Allergies in Montreal in early November. “There shouldn’t be any hidden sources of priority allergens,” he later told Allergic Living. “If somebody puts an ingredient label on a food, it had better be accurate for priority allergens.” Benrejeb Godefroy sees the interim guidelines as an effective tool: “We don’t want to be managing by recalls. What we want is to create predictability in the system.”

Health Canada is also working to update its policy on “may contain” statements on packages, which have become ubiquitous, varied and confusing to consumers. For one much anticipated change – the issue of spelling out priority allergens in plain English or French (e.g. “milk” rather than “casein”) – consumers will still have to wait for the new regulations.

First published in Allergic Living magazine, Winter 2007-08
(c) Copyright AGW Publishing Inc.
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