Page 25 - FoodFocusThailand No.169 April 2020

SPECIAL FOCUS
SPECIAL FOCUS

Food Allergen:

Testing & Management

Food allergens and food hypersensitivity are an important public health
problem and have increasingly become major concerns for food and beverage
manufacturers. The reason is the number of people diagnosed with food allergies
and food hypersensitivity has increased significantly over the last several years
as well as the number of hospital visits. At the same time, allergens that are
not declared on food and beverage labels have been recalled increasingly
(FARRP, 2020b).

The only way for consumers who have food allergies in avoiding specific allergic foods is to review
labels. Therefore, it is a serious responsibility of food manufacturers to accurately declare allergens in
the product and to prevent allergens cross-contact during production. In case of accidental introduction
of allergens during production, the manufacturer has widely used precautionary allergen labelling (PAL;
a statement such as ‘may contain’). Even the lack of regulation on using PAL and allergen thresholds,
the Voluntary Program has been developed in Australia and New Zealand to assist food manufacturers
1
in evaluating the potential risk, managing allergen cross-contact during food production and food
laboratories can use them in evaluating method sensitivity. Other references for allergen thresholds are
the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) and the Netherlands Food and
Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA).

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