Information Leaflets: Introduction

These general recommendations and leaflets have been developed by leading experts in the field of food allergy and intolerance. They are all members of InformAll, an EU-funded project that promotes provision of easily-obtained trustworthy information about food allergy from credible sources for consumers as well as the agro-food industry. InformAll includes patient organisations, social and natural scientists, primary producers, manufacturers and retailers, health professionals and regulators across Europe. InformAll also aims to provide accurate, evidence based and trustworthy information targeted at specific subpopulations of society, using methods of communication and language that are easily accessible to end-users, on how to inform their customers/stakeholders about food allergy issues. The most important point is dissemination of correct and valid information, which experts agree is the best available at the present time.

One of the conclusions reached in the InformAll project was that different stakeholders and end-users of food allergy information have different information needs and priorities. The aim of this part of the InformAll project was to develop specific recommendations for effective communication, targeted at the needs of these different groups. As a first step, the InformAll team decided to produce a series of “communication recommendation leaflets", each of which could be accessed as an independent document, providing communication recommendations which could be used by any communicator aiming to target food allergy and intolerance information to each of the following end-users. The information takes full account of international regulatory harmonisation in the area of food allergy, whilst recognising that there may be national, or more local, differences in consumer protection practices and regulation.

• General Recommendations [PDF]

• The food industry in general, including manufacturers and retailers [PDF]

• Consumers - the general public [PDF]

• Health professionals [PDF]

• Food-allergic individuals [PDF]

• Food safety authorities [PDF]

• Caterers and the food-service industry [PDF]

It is not the intention to provide the food allergy and intolerance information itself in these leaflets, as this would duplicate what is going to be presented in other parts of the InformAll website. The next phase of the project will apply the recommendations in order to review the relevance of the information contained in different parts of the InformAll web site to the information needs of different stakeholders and end-users.

We very much hope that the leaflets will be of use to communicators when developing food allergy information targeting different end-users. There is limited resource within the project, and, as a consequence, we cannot publish paper copies of the leaflets. However, they will be presented on the website in such a form that each electronic leaflet can easily be downloaded as separate document printed off in black and white. If as a user you have any comments about the leaflets and our strategy these are very welcome and should be addressed to Clare Mills in the first instance.