Advances in the risk management of unintended presence of allergenic foods in manufactured food products – An overview

• Published in: Food and chemical toxicology 2014-05, Vol.67, p.255-261
• Main Authors: Hattersley, Sue, Ward, Rachel, Baka, Athanasia, Crevel, René W.R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Allergens - analysis; Allergic diseases; Biological and medical sciences; Digestive allergic diseases; Eliciting dose; Food allergy; Food Contamination - analysis; Food toxicology; Immunopathology; Medical sciences; Probabilistic modelling; Public health; Reference dose; Risk assessment; Risk Management; Toxicology
• ISSN: 0278-6915; 1873-6351
• DOI: 10.1016/j.fct.2014.01.036

•Food allergy has become a growing food safety concern worldwide.•The data and the methods available to assess food allergen risk have developed considerably.•Consistent allergen management requires generally agreed evidence-based standards.•Allergen risks need to be communicated effectively to allergic consumers for those standards to be accepted. Food allergy is a relatively recent newcomer to the ranks of food safety issues, only being effectively recognised as such in the last 25–30years. This recognition, allied with the near impossibility of avoiding the unintended presence of small, yet potentially dangerous residues of allergenic constituents, brought with it the need to assess and manage the resulting risk. This paper provides an overview of the development and current knowledge and thinking on risk assessment and its application to risk management of food allergens. It also discusses the associated challenges, in particular those around communicating meaningfully that risk to allergic consumers, including the use of precautionary labelling. The paper also provides an introductory context to the more detailed analyses of these issues in the following papers, based on the deliberations of a recent stakeholder workshop. The paper concludes that consistent risk management approaches using agreed quantitative action levels based on scientifically robust principles will provide optimal protection to allergic consumers. Growing amounts of data from oral food challenges along with the parallel development of risk assessment methodologies, such as probabilistic modelling, offer a realistic possibility of agreement among stakeholders on such levels in the near future.