Updated Retail Food Code Standards for Allergen Awareness took effect Sept. 11
On Sept. 11, the Massachusetts Department of Health enacted new Retail Food Code Standards for Allergen Awareness, quickly moving forward with updated training standards for food service workers approved by the state’s legislature the same day.
The regulation was written by Nicole Arpiarian, a mother of two whose son went into anaphylaxis shock in 2018 after eating a pop tart filled with peanut butter. The family was dining out at a Massachusetts restaurant and had ordered the item after being assured by their waitress it was peanut free. Arpiarian’s son has a severe peanut allergy and he quickly struggled to breathe, breaking out in hives and losing his ability to speak. He was rushed by ambulance to a local ER where he experienced a second, more severe reaction and was rushed again to a second hospital.
Since then, Arpiarian has been working to pass a food safety bill that calls for stricter food-allergen safety measures and training in food service establishments.
“When that happened to my son, I made every promise in the world to God to figure out what happened and to prevent it from happening again if I could,” Arpiarian said. “That day our incident occurred, something was blindly reached for in the walk-in that wasn’t properly labeled. And I thought nothing is going to change until the law changes. It was then that I said to my husband, ‘I’m going to change the law.’”
Arpiarian then worked on a bill to do just that; however, it was killed two times during subsequent legislative sessions and Arpiarian struggled to find its focus. That’s when she read an article in Allergic Living magazine that featured MenuTrinfo and its AllerTrain suite of food-allergen safety courses.
She immediately picked up the phone and spoke with MenuTrinfo CEO Betsy Craig, who founded the company in 2010 and has long been a champion of food-allergy safety training for hospitality employees. That phone call, and the countless others shared between the two, led Arpiarian to shift her focus to food allergen training specifically, a move that allowed the measure to gain momentum and high-level support from more than 80 Massachusetts legislators.
“Betsy was a phenomenal resource and she opened my eyes to food allergy training and accreditation, and what it means to have accredited training,” Arpiarian said. “She was instrumental in helping me understand that instead of training more employees, we needed to train them better. And that’s when everything started to come together.”
Arpiarian then put together the language for how to enhance food-allergen safety training and awareness that included accredited videos, allergen labels on menus, stricter cleaning procedures to avoid cross contact, and more. (All major components of the bill can be found here.)
“It’s amazing that Nicole would not keep sub-par training in her state simply because it was already there,” Craig said. “Training before these new standards consisted of a 22-minute video that was made nearly 20 years ago. You could pause it, fast forward it or skip to the end without anyone knowing the difference. The impact these new standards will have on the community is huge.”
MenuTrinfo is the nation’s leading nutritional and menu consulting company, providing CPG programs such as ISO17065 Certified Free From for food allergens, Accredited ANAB AllerTrain and Food Handler Course. Also under MenuTrinfo’s umbrella is AllerCheck, Vegan Verified, Certified Gluten Free and other services answering the Consumer Packaged Goods food allergy needs to various levels of food safety guidance, allergy expertise, and much more. A Certified Women Owned Business, headquartered in Columbia, MD, MenuTrinfo has built its sterling reputation serving the foodservice industry since 2010.
