Viewpoint
A vision for allergen management best practice in the food industry

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2010.09.004Get rights and content

Abstract

Allergenic foods have become recognised as a food safety hazard over the last two decades. Over the same period, knowledge about the biology and clinical characteristics of food allergy has grown, together with information that can be used to assess the risk more accurately. While current practices in allergen management have increased the safety of food products to allergic consumers, the standards applied by different manufacturers remain divergent in the absence of agreed approaches to risk assessment. This has been reflected in a considerable expansion of precautionary labelling and a concomitant reduction in consumers’ trust, resulting in risk-taking. To address these issues, this paper advocates a risk management approach based on a common agreed set of principles, leading to consistent and well-understood management action levels across the food industry. The approach also recognises that minimising the risk from allergenic foods is a shared responsibility of all the stakeholders involved. Action levels, by permitting a consistent use of precautionary labelling and clear communication of the allergen status of a food, will play a crucial role in ensuring that risks from allergenic foods are reduced as far as possible.

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

References (25)

  • Codex Alimentarius Commission (1997). Food hygiene basic texts. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP)...
  • Crevel, R. W. R. (2009). Chapter 5: Risk management – the principles. In J. Coutts, & R. Fielder (Eds) Management of...
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text