ViewpointA vision for allergen management best practice in the food industry
Section snippets
Background
The concept of managing food allergens as a food safety risk emerged in the last decade of the 20th century and has matured considerably over the last 10–15 years. Allergen management has evolved in line with the growing knowledge and understanding of the issue. Initially, little was known about the key determinants of risk; namely how sensitivity and reactivity to allergens varied across the susceptible population, and in response to the dose consumed. Knowledge of the numbers of consumers
FDF Allergens Steering Group
The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) represents the interests of the UK’s food and non-alcoholic drinks industry, which is the country’s largest manufacturing sector. Its membership comprises approximately a third of UK food manufacturers of all sizes–making products as diverse as breakfast cereals, organic yogurt and many others – as well as trade associations and groups dealing with specific sectors of the industry.
The FDF set up an Allergens Steering Group of industry experts to deal with
Current allergen management
The UK food and drink industry expects manufacturers to produce safe, high quality products, which are clearly labelled with allergens in ingredient declarations. Provision of accurate and unambiguous information on product packs is essential to allow sensitive consumers to make informed decisions as to whether they can safely consume the product. Food manufacturers declare the presence of common allergenic ingredients (as defined in Directive 2007/68/EC, the most recent amendment of Annex IIIa
Allergen controls in practice
While accurate labelling may seem a straightforward issue, incorrect labels actually account for a large proportion of product recalls in the UK, as well as in other countries. Data for the UK over the last two years show that the two main causes of recalls are the omission of an allergen on an ingredient label and placing the wrong product in the wrong pack (Food Standard Agency, 2009).
Since 2005, there has been a rise in the number of allergen incidents reported to the Food Standards Agency
How do we move forward?
The FDF Allergens Steering Group sees the key being to move from a hazard based approach for allergen management to one based on risk.
Current allergen management focuses largely on the hazard. This has driven conservative industry standards around control of unintentional allergen cross-contact during food manufacture, where allergen management and cleaning approaches can sometimes “chase molecules around the supply chain”. It is not realistic or practicable to expect to eliminate allergens
Action levels for allergen management
The Action Level for an allergen [allergenic food] denotes the amount per portion, which when unavoidably present in a product despite allergen management control efforts, would not elicit severe reactions in the vast majority of sensitive individuals.
Commonly accepted tolerable levels have yet to be established for food hypersensitivity (with the exception of gluten) and Directive 2003/89/EC gives no threshold or guidance as to what constitutes a tolerable or safe level. The current UK
Allergen risk management approach
Application of a hazard-based approach decreases the food choices of the allergic population through proliferation and inconsistent usage of precautionary labelling which increases the possibility that they will suffer nutritional deficiencies. It will certainly reduce quality of life (Avery, King, Knight, & Hourihane, 2003). Consumers’ failure to react to products carrying precautionary warnings may be wholly misinterpreted leading to wrong and dangerous conclusions that they are no longer
Stakeholders’ mutual responsibilities
Dealing with food allergy is a shared responsibility between the food industry, regulators, health professionals and, last but by no means least, allergic patients themselves. All stakeholders have responsibilities in allergen risk management encompassing consistent risk assessment, capable cross-contact control management programmes, accurate allergen communication down the supply chain and accurate on pack risk communication to show product status. In turn, allergic individuals must play
Conclusion
The FDF Vision has been drawn up with the aim of minimising the risk to our allergic consumers whilst maximising their choices. We firmly believe that industry risk management practices are sufficiently capable to deliver this vision to the highest standards.
The risk-based approach serves both consumers and industry better than a hazard-based approach and together we can leverage the full power of industry capability to manage allergens and allow consumers to make the right choices.
To establish
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