Allergen risk assessment considering Allergenicity?

Dear all,



I am in process of doing Allergen risk assessment in the bakery mainly for gluten cross contamination as we also produce gluten free products along with products containing, nuts, milk, egg, soya and sesame seeds.

Have any one got any template doc for Allergen risk assessment considering Allergencity (Physical form/potency/protein content) of the allergen.


I look very much forward to hear from you.


Regards

Martinblue

Very interesting question. I am no expert and look forward to more enlightening replies than this one but I would have thought you need to assess the likelihood of cross-contamination, validate cleaning methods etc and decide on labelling requirements. I guess "may contain" may feature heavilly (?).
While certain allergens such as nuts, peanuts and sesame are recognised to be more serious than others and allergenic proteins can be quantified in some cases, I would have thought that you would not be able to rank the seriousness of "allergenicity" as the repsonse from a sufferer will vary depending on the individual. For example, someone with a serious milk allergy may have more problems than someone with a mild nut allergy.

Hi D-D,

Thanks for the comments. i am planning to categorise allergens as per their allergencity i,e sesame seeds,nuts in one category - milk, egg in other category etc and consider these categories while risk assessment. Category with nuts/sesame seeds would be consider significant hazards as compare to other categories.

Hmm. I'd be careful with this approach as 'allergenicity' is quite a vague term. I mean, do you mean the amount of allergen required to cause a reaction or do you mean the incidence of allergenic response; i.e. how many individuals are allergic to that allergen?

If you mean the amount of allergen required for a response, this link might be helpful:

http://www.allergenbureau.net/

You can calculate likely protein levels of the allergen in the finished products using tools on the above website (but I would say there is no substitute for some testing.)

And here is a link to the levels of protein the Australian government have identified as causing an issue:

http://www.allergenb...2_July_2007.pdf

If you notice, the level for eggs is the same as nuts, so should they be in some kind of lower category?

Also consider if you are making gluten free products and marketing them as such, you would need to be more cautious about this than anything else. Remember as part of your risk assessment in cross contamination and cleaning method validation, you need to consider the risks of cross contamination wrt the physical form of the allergen. I work in a bakery and flour gets everywhere.