Why has Tesco suddenly changed nut allergy information on its merchandise?

Folks with nut allergy symptoms locate peanuts notably difficult to keep away from. Photograph: Alamy

Will these potatoes include peanuts? What about this fruit juice? Preposterous questions possibly, but Clare Hussein is nonetheless asking herself them following she observed that Tesco changed its “may possibly contain nuts” tips on a raft of unlikely things. She has a daughter, aged three, with a number of allergic reactions.

“These merchandise virtually changed their allergy data overnight,” she says. “When you attempt a weekly store for your family members and uncover that every thing from baked beans to pizza, butternut squash and more is abruptly labelled as possibly unsafe, it leaves you with extremely limited choices for feeding your family.”

Hussein, from Portsmouth, has commenced a petition towards the store’s “blanket labelling” at Adjust.org/tesconuts. It presently has a lot more than 13,000 signatures. Tesco is shifting labelling to meet the specifications of EU legislation that comes into force in December. A spokesperson for the supermarket advised us: “Our initial priority is often the safety of our clients. We only display these warnings on products when there is a chance of cross contamination.”

To these with no knowledge of nut allergy symptoms, they might seem like a fabrication of a present day globe that constantly requirements one thing to fret about. But allergies can destroy. “One particular in 70 kids was allergic to nuts in 2002,” says Maureen Jenkins, director of clinical solutions at Allergy United kingdom, which is in discussion with Tesco over its labelling. “The numbers have tripled in the final decade.”

To people with an allergy, nuts are tough to avoid. “There is peanut all over the place,” says Pam Ewan, advisor allergist at Addenbrookes hospital, whose controlled examine of peanut oral immunotherapy was published in the Lancet in January. “Peanut eating is reasonably current. A person who is 50 or 60 would not have had nuts in their residence. They have been luxury items. Now the peanut is quite extensively utilised. It is in people’s houses, on surfaces. If you took swabs from worktops or floors [of households without having allergic reactions], you’d discover peanut.”

Ewan has worked on allergy symptoms for 30 years. It was in the mid-90s, she says, that she noticed people coming to her with nut allergy symptoms. “Sixty-two cases in a year,” she says. “The beginning of the uprise.” But her latest research has proven a possible alternative, by desensitising people with peanut allergic reactions through exposing them to small every day amounts of peanut protein.

At first this may well suggest 20mg, but by six months the exposure can attain five nuts a day. Above time, the allergy is “switched off”. Ewan is not alone in exploring this cure – similar approaches have been attempted in the US – but the Addenbrookes work was a managed research. Ewan’s crew hopes to open a clinic in Cambridge later this yr , whilst the extended approach of applying for a licence for the remedy is beneath way.

None of which makes Hussein’s work of buying for her daughter any easier. She says she is but to hear back from Tesco on her queries she would like to know whether or not the merchandise themselves have transformed or just the labels. Nonetheless, she has observed that some of the packaging – of ham and Hi Juice drinks –has had the “could incorporate nuts” data eliminated.

“Individuals say: ‘Shop somewhere else,’” she says, “but it’s not as straightforward as that. I went into the greengrocer last week and they had nuts hanging in the doorway.” For now, the Tesco herby potatoes and prepacked butternut squash are nevertheless off the menu.

Why has Tesco suddenly changed nut allergy information on its merchandise?