Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How do I contact you about a food alert?
A. Food companies wishing to warn consumers about an allergy related incident should call us on 020 8878 2514

Q. What is alert4allergy?
A. alert4allergy is a new service for anyone with severe food allergy to allow food companies to contact you to warn of food that may be dangerous

Q. How will you protect my privacy
A. We guard your privacy jealously and will never sell or disclose any of your personal details (see our privacy policy for more details).

Q. What sort of alerts will you contact me about?
A. Some recent alerts include

  • Nut traces in packets of sunflower seeds
  • Milk and gluten not disclosed on crisp packet label
  • Prawn spring rolls labelled as duck spring rolls
  • Peanuts and milk in chicken soup noodles
  • Undisclosed egg in Derby scones

Q. How often do these mistakes happen?
A. Approximately 30 times in 2005

Q. What else will you contact me about
A. We may also contact you to warn you about recipe changes that are relevant to your allergy - for example if you have milk allergy and a product changes its recipe to include milk, the manufacturer may use our service to warn you. We will also send you a newsletter (no more than twelve times a year) with offers and news relevant to people with food allergy

Q. How can I unsubscribe?
A. Every email we send you will have an unsubscribe link

Q. How do you contact me?
A. We will send an email and either an SMS text message to your mobile phone or a voice message to a BT telephone

Q. Who pays for this service?
A. The service is paid for by food manufacturers. We rely on them to fund our alert messages to you.

Q. Why isn't there an email only option?
A. We think email is just not reliable enough. Spam is a huge and growing problem, with most ISPs filtering out vast numbers of unsolicited emails before they even get to your computer. We believe that the risk of our alerts being blocked by spam filters is just too great - hence we prefer to use text messages whenever we can.

Q. Can I publish allergy alerts on my own website.
A. Yes, click here for more information