On January 4, the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Management Act became law as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act. It mandates the creation of voluntary food allergy management guidelines to apply to schools across the United States. While voluntary, the guidelines will be a valuable and consistent resource for schools in all states.

It calls on the federal government to create food allergy management guidelines for the schools so that any school in the U.S. has something to look to if they need help managing students with food allergies.

The specific guidelines are still being developed by the CDC - Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH), The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN), the National Association of School Nurses (NASN), and the National School Boards Association (NSBA).

The bill does a couple of important things:

1. Requires the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop and make available to schools a voluntary policy to manage the risk of food allergy and anaphylaxis in schools.

2. Will provide for school-based food allergy management incentive grants to support implementation of food allergy management guidelines in public schools.

For more information regarding the actual implementation of the bill and food allergies in general:

The White House Blog
The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network
CDC - Division of Adolescent and School Health