ARTICLES The Food Allergy Risk Management in the EU Labelling Legislation Federica Mainente 1 • Caterina Fratea 2 • Barbara Simonato 1 • Gianni Zoccatelli 1 • Corrado Rizzi 1 Accepted: 6 May 2017 / Published online: 18 May 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 Abstract Food allergy represents an increasing public health issue, and a large number of food control authorities have provided regulations aimed to minimize the risk of allergic reaction for sensitized consumers. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations together with the World Health Organization established the Codex Alimentarius Commission whose main goal is to protect the consumers’ health. To purse this task the Commission listed the foods and ingre- dients causing the most severe allergic reactions that should be labelled. It has been reported that some cases of specific foods hypersensitivity display a different prevalence among different Countries. Thus, the European Union drew up a list of mandatory allergens (that must be labelled) longer than that provided by Codex Alimentarius. As a consequence of the complexity of the legal phraseology of the European Union (EU) and/or European Community (EC) the Regulations and/or Directives were differently translated in all EC/EU official languages determining possible misinterpretations of the legislation. Moreover, food labelling regulations were also established with the goal to promote the consumers’ conscious choice about what they eat. Starting from the case of the fermented beverages, we analysed & Gianni Zoccatelli gianni.zoccatelli@univr.it Federica Mainente federica.mainente@univr.it Caterina Fratea caterina.fratea@univr.it Barbara Simonato barbara.simonato@univr.it Corrado Rizzi corrado.rizzi@univr.it 1 Department of Biotechnology, University of Verona, Strada Le Grazie 15, 37134 Verona, Italy 2 Department of Law, University of Verona, Via Carlo Montanari 9, 37122 Verona, Italy 123 J Agric Environ Ethics (2017) 30:275–285 DOI 10.1007/s10806-017-9668-5