Safety is the main priority of all supervisory bodies inspecting foodstuffs. Inspection of allergen labelling comes under this scope as well. Legislation  exactly specifies which food components or substances thereof are regarded as allergens. Peanuts, eggs, milk, gluten, shellfish or soya count among the most known. People suffering from allergy to a specific foodstuff must completely exclude it from their diet, as in case of its consumption, they are exposed to various health complications ranging from stomach aches to respiration problems – depending on the type of the allergy. From this reason, producers must clearly indicate the content of all allergen components on the packaging of the foodstuffs so that the allergists could avoid them. This labelling is not obligatory if the content of allergen is already obvious from the name of the foodstuff, for example “egg pasta“ or “milk rice“.

Proper labelling of allergens on the food is subjected to inspections of the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority. The inspectors run into undeclared allergens in two forms. The more frequent one revealed by the laboratories is presence of allergen residues in foodstuffs. This is caused by accidental and unintentional contamination, for example by non-observing the recipe or by insufficient cleaning the assembly line where production of a foodstuff containing the allergen is followed by production of a foodstuff without its content. Producers sometimes prevent this residual occurrence by indicating precautionary warnings on the packaging, for instance: “It may contain traces of peanuts“.

 However, laboratories occasionally detect undeclared allergens in higher amount. This is a clear evidence that the producer failed to list one of the used ingredients or raw materials containing the allergen. This was also the recent case of the product named Hořické trubičky polomáčené produced by Josef Petráček from Hořice. The inspectors revealed that one of the used raw materials consisted of peanuts, although these were not listed as an ingredient of the final product.

 In all cases of detection of a foodstuff containing an allergen which is not given on the labelling, theInspection Authority orders an immediate withdrawal of such inappropriately labelled foodstuff. If the producer relabels the foodstuffs with additional information on allergen content, they can be further put into circulation. This was fulfilled by Josef Petráček, therefore his product can be sold again.