Allergen risk assessment
Hi, everyone!
I'm, at the time, doing a internship in a meat processing center that wants to migrate from ISO 22000 to FSSC 22000 and my dissertation's theme revolves around this. I don't have much experience in this area and I'm finding dificult assessing the allergen risk of the facility and putting it on papper. Is there any template I can use to guide me in this aventure?
They produce products with and without allergens according to an appropriate producing sequence and clean the contact equipment whenever necessary (in between different allergens). They also have related GMP and PRPs. I already propose label cheks, segregation at recepcion and storage locations, dedicated utensils and some other changes. I also have doubts concerning the need to do a allergen cleaning validation on equipments, is it necessary? I sugested it, but they think it'll be very expensive and they already have the cleaning microbiologically validated and verified and use detergents known to be very effective.
Dumb question: if I produce a products highly allergenic (3 different allergens) and perform adequate cleaning of the equipment can I reduce the probability of cross contamination? And what about it's impact (consequence's on the consumer health)? I'm thinking that it's not possible to reduce it's impact/severity, only the probability of happening? But I've been tool otherwise and now I'm cluess.
You absolutely have to perform allergen validations....otherwise how do you know if there is no cross contamination? Depending on the risk of cross contamination, you may not have to perform this daily. The cost for instant swabs is not as high as they may be thinking. We use Neogen when we run our allergen, and the couple of dollars in money well spent to be sure.
At the absolute minimum, an actual validation needs to be performed on the process as it stands right now by swabbing the equipment post sanitizer to be sure what your currently doing is sufficient. Meat plants have notoriously small spaces for material to get caught in and hide.
Assume worst case scenario.....the dosatron stops working, or no one realized they ran out of cleaner half way through and just carried on with water where allergens are concerned.
Allergens are not the same as microbes, they are proteins and as such as harder to break down, you need to actually remove them
Hi, everyone!
I'm, at the time, doing a internship in a meat processing center that wants to migrate from ISO 22000 to FSSC 22000 and my dissertation's theme revolves around this. I don't have much experience in this area and I'm finding dificult assessing the allergen risk of the facility and putting it on papper. Is there any template I can use to guide me in this aventure?
They produce products with and without allergens according to an appropriate producing sequence and clean the contact equipment whenever necessary (in between different allergens). They also have related GMP and PRPs. I already propose label cheks, segregation at recepcion and storage locations, dedicated utensils and some other changes. I also have doubts concerning the need to do a allergen cleaning validation on equipments, is it necessary? I sugested it, but they think it'll be very expensive and they already have the cleaning microbiologically validated and verified and use detergents known to be very effective.
Dumb question: if I produce a products highly allergenic (3 different allergens) and perform adequate cleaning of the equipment can I reduce the probability of cross contamination? And what about it's impact (consequence's on the consumer health)? I'm thinking that it's not possible to reduce it's impact/severity, only the probability of happening? But I've been tool otherwise and now I'm cluess.
Hi nevralgia,
A set of typical allergen control programs are compiled here -
http://www.ifsqn.com...ccp/#entry73185
files acp (1,2,6) utilise a similar template which I have extracted [from "6"] here -
allergen control procedure.png 92.69KB 2 downloads
The organisation of the production of items with varying allergenic content is typically optimised via a cross-matrix, some examples here -
I second the comment that you absolutely need to validate the cleaning procedures to show that they are adequate to remove allergens as well as the comment that you need to look carefully for potential locations where product may hang-up. Validation requires allergen testing, but once you have developed a validated cleaning protocol you can use other methods for routine monitoring and verification. I suggest that you set up a system with frequent testing of equipment and product after initial validation, and then reduce the frequency over time if the procedures can be shown to be effective.