Labelling rules (chocolate...)

[heliotrope]

Does anyone know anything about labelling rules? I've a bar of choc covered marzipan (National Trust shop) and in the ingredients it just lists 'plain chocolate' along with the expected almonds, sugar etc. It does not list milk or the usual milk derivatives in the list.

I'm sure you'd usually see a further list of what the 'plain chocolate' contains, but there isn't one. There's then a generic 'made in a factory that uses milk, nuts, etc' warning.

I will obviously not risk this product with milk allergic DS, although I suspect it is probably OK. Just wondered whether plain choc can be listed as an ingredient in this way given that it probably has other ingredients...

Thanks!

The EU laws on allergen labelling state that if a product contains milk then it must be listed in the ingredients so if the plain chocolate contains milk then it should state this in the ingredients. Funnily enough, I recently posted a thread about a similar issue that we encountered a fortnight ago whereby our childminder came DS a plain chocolate covered biscuit because it did not mention milk in the ingredients but unfortunately she hadn't noticed an additional box which said that it contained soya & dairy. It made DS very ill and I reported it to Anaphylaxis Campaign and they confirmed that if it contained milk then it should have stated this in the ingredients, not in an allergy advice box (plus it must say milk not dairy) so I've reported it to the Food Standards Agency and my local Trading Standards who are investigating.

Plain chocolate can be listed as it is without any further explanation but only if it does not contain any of the 14 listed EU allergens. This is also true for other things such as 'margarine'.

That is really interesting freefrom mum - thanks for clearing it up - sounds as though it is milk free then which is good news for us. It definitely sounds wrong about the biscuit, good idea to report it.

I know that there are changes afoot to the allergen label rules which I had understood means we won't see 'may contain' warnings so much (a good thing) and we'll have to look in the ingredients list rather than for the shortcut allergy box that the supermarkets use. I think they're trying to make it clearer although I have to say I have found the boxes a useful quick check - if there is a allergens box and it only mentions allergens we are ok with such as wheat, then I know we are OK.

I was wondering if there's been any discussion on here on whether these changes are actually helpful - couldn't find any on a quick search though.