6 replies to this topic

[ajayroyal]

Do we need to segregate chicken vs non chicken products during cooling. our cooling process is based on blowing chilled air. we basically load chicken vs non chicken products onto different racks and the product is chilled by blowing cold air on to the product. Is there any possibility that allergen may get transferred even the chicken vs non chicken products are on different racks?

 

 

 

[olenazh]

What allergen? Chicken is not considered allergen in Canada. 

[Brothbro]

Aside from chicken not really being an allergen, for the sake of the argument it would be prudent to do some testing to justify your storage scenario. It really is product dependent. For example, say you had a cooling room for baked goods where one rack has pastries with shaved almond, while the other rack does not. The strong air movement in the room may blow almond chunks off of one rack on to another. Other product types, however, may not have this issue. 

 

An inquisitive auditor may feel the air movement in your room and ask about allergen segregation and how you've proven that there isn't any between racks. Seems like testing yourself would be the best way to go about it. But again, chicken is not an allergen in Canada or the US.

[Dorothy87]

Hi, 

 

Chicken is not classified as allergen in UK, however I believe you had in your mind something that could be transferred, for example small particles like sesame seed (sesame seed is classified as allergen in UK and EU). Maybe you are concerned about milk in marinade? and then tiny crumbles can be transferred? I would do a risk assessment then sampling, toppings usually are the worst (sesame seeds, almonds flakes), then possible to transfer like crumbles etc and finally solid food products. 

 

[emportllc]

As was already said, testing is probably merited and the risk likely depends somewhat on which allergen you're thinking of and what form it's in. But for anecdata on blowing air transferring allergens: 

 

Many years ago a customer who made various doughs was convinced the gluten LFD strips we sold them were not working, because they got what seemed like false positives at random. It took a facility visit to figure out the issue: their QA lab had an in-wall air conditioner that blew air in from the production floor. The countertop where they would run their gluten tests was right in the path of the AC. If they ran their tests while the production floor was running a gluten product — BOOM, occasional positives. Tests while the production floor was offline or running GF — no gluten found. 

 

 If you were chilling, say, chicken and also fish filets — it would be easy enough to run some fish LFDs on the surface layer of some chicken to collect some data.  

[jfrey123]

Is there any concern here for not just transmission of allergens, but transmission of pathogens?  If your non-chicken product isn't likely to suffer from salmonella concerns, setting it directly adjacent to cooling chicken with a fan blowing air across all surfaces seems like a scary idea to me.  Most allergen plans call for stringent separation of allergen containing vs non-allergen containing, so at a minimum I'd want to suggest you don't put non-allergen and allergen in the same open air cooler to begin with, and additionally I'd want to suggest not mixing the batches in the same cooling system.  If you end up with a recall for the chicken for pathogen concerns, and your process places other foods in such proximity, you'd have a hard time justifying not recalling the other product as well.

[KTD]

You did not mention the condition of the chicken, but JFrey123 addressed raw poultry, If the chicken is cooked and being cooled, another consideration might be cooling curve differences between products. In the US, there are time/temperature requirements for chilling cooked (or parcooked) products that might need to be reviewed if there are similar Canadian requirements.

 

KTD