Allergen control in the chocolate industry using same equipment

Hi Everyone. How does one manage allergen contamination for a small chocolate company that does milk, peanuts  and dark chocolate on the same line. Milk is batched and poured directly into the tanks in the main processing room. Thank you for your responses

When I was in chocolate, we used the dark to push through the milk--the push through volume was put into the next milk chocolate batch---this was however, never validated  (i was in cannabis at the time)

Being you want to avoid moisture whenever possible, this seemed like the best option at the time

For nuts, I'm not sure how the protein would bind with the fat, so unsure if the push through option will work

Hi, can you plan your production to run dark first, then milk, and finally peanut followed by a chemical cleandown? Is peanut chocolate dark or milk? Use 'May contain' labelling.

Thank you for your response. Can you tell me what about the milk powder that may be present in the room when adding into the machinery? Do you have to have a separate batching area or can cleaning the space and the equipment after the allergen work? 

Oh, snap, we brought in blended chocolate and then melted and deposited, so we were not formulating the chocolate from scratch

You'd really just have to batch out a few milk blends, clean/sanitize all surfaces (not the in process machines) and then swab with a milk protein swab to see how far the powder went.  No 2 buildings are the same, so this is the best way to know how large (if any) an issue you actually have

Double check what the limits are as well in what ever countries you will be selling in, then you'll know what you need to meet