The Codex Alimentarius Commission adopted new international guidelines on precautionary allergen labelling on 6 July 2026, marking a shift towards a risk-based approach to “may contain” statements. Under the guidance, precautionary allergen labelling (PAL) should only be used once a risk assessment has demonstrated that the unintended presence of an allergen exceeds an established action level, following the application of appropriate mitigation measures. The aim is to reduce unnecessary use of PAL while giving consumers clearer and more reliable information.
Risk assessment sits at the heart of this new guidance, and it is a principle ILSI Europe's Food Allergy Task Force has spent years helping to define.
Since 2019, the Task Force's Expert Group on Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) has run a series of consensus-building workshops bringing together food safety authorities, academia, industry and patient organisations to develop a methodology for quantitative risk assessment applied to food allergens. This work resulted in the 2022 Practical Guidance on the Application of Food Allergen Quantitative Risk Assessment, led by an Expert Group chaired by Ben Remington and (University of Nebraska) and co-chaired by Michael Walker (Laboratory of the Government Chemist, UK). The full list of all the experts who participated in this activity can be found below.
The guidance was designed not only for food business operators, but for a much wider audience. It supports risk assessment decisions taken by suppliers, regulatory bodies, patient organisations, and certification standards and auditors across the food supply chain. The Food Allergy Task Force keeps the guidance as a living-document and disseminates it through training and a Community of Practice launched in 2023, which now connects around 200 members worldwide.
The Food Allergy Task Force is also home to a separate Expert Group working on the practical side of this same agenda: identifying barriers to harmonising precautionary allergen labelling standards and helping implement the recommendations of the FAO/WHO consultation that informed the new Codex guidance.
Read more about ILSI Europe's food allergy activities, including the quantitative risk assessment guidance and the precautionary allergen labelling work: Food Allergy Task Force page
Join the Community of Practice: LinkedIn group
Brief description of the standard adopted at the 49th session of the Commission
General standard for the labelling of pre-packaged foods (CXS 1-1985) - guidelines on the use of precautionary allergen labelling
ADOPTED – 6.7.2026
The Codex Alimentarius Commission has adopted guidelines on precautionary allergen labelling (PAL) which aim to provide consumers with access to clear and accurate information on the presence of allergens in foods, so that they can make safe food choices, and increase harmonization to facilitate trade.
The guidelines are a significant milestone in food allergen labelling as they promote a risk-based approach, highlighting that the decision to use PAL should be based on the findings of a risk assessment. The guidelines also provide reference doses which serve as the basis for establishing action levels, and indicate that PAL shall only be used when, following the application of appropriate mitigation measures, it is demonstrated that unintended presence of a food allergen is above the action level. The overall aim is to avoid unnecessary use of PAL and ensure that a science and risk-based approach is applied in any decisions to use PAL.
From: https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2026/07/06/default-calendar/forty-ninth-session-of-the-fao-who-codex-alimentarius-commission-adopts-new-standards (consulted 15-Jul-26)
Key contributors to the ILSI Europe QRA guidance
| Dr Ben Remington | University of Nebraska | US |
| Prof. Joseph Baumert | University of Nebraska | US |
| Dr Marty Blom | The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) | NL |
| Dr Luca Bucchini | Hylobates Consulting | IT |
| Dr Neil Buck | General Mills | CH |
| Prof. René Crevel | René Crevel Consulting | UK |
| Ms Fleur De Mooij | Danone Nutricia Research | NL |
| Dr Simon Flanagan | Mondelēz International | UK |
| Angeliki Stavropoulou | ILSI Europe | BE |
| Dr Myrthe van den Dungen | DSM | NL |
| Dr Marjan van Ravenhorst | Allergenen Consultancy | NL |
| Dr Michael Walker | Laboratory of the Government Chemist (LGC) | UK |
| Dr Si Wang | PepsiCo International | UK |