Vernon Sanders Law once said, “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.” The food industry’s experience with allergens in food products appears to support Law’s observation. In recent years there has been an increasing number of food product recalls due to undeclared allergens on labels (Figure 1). The good news is that we all can learn from these recalls by identifying the most common errors that lead to the inadvertent inclusion of allergenic ingredients into finished product and the consequences that lead to undeclared allergens.
Setting up and implementing an allergen control plan (ACP) in your food processing plant is an good way to avoid inadvertent allergen cross-contamination and thus avoid potentially damaging recalls and the adverse or even fatal physiological reactions in consumers. An ACP is a systematic method for identifying and controlling allergens, from the incoming ingredients to the final packaged product in any food processing facility. This article will outline the fundamental steps involved in developing an effective ACP in the food plant.
Controlling the Big 8
As an ancillary program to the manufacturing plant’s Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points (HACCP) plan, the first step in developing an ACP is the assessment of allergens as part of the hazard analysis. An allergen within a food product is considered a chemical hazard. The top eight food allergens are soy, wheat, eggs, milk, peanuts, tree nuts, fish and shellfish. Once an allergen is identified by your operation as a raw ingredient or contained within a raw ingredient, control steps must be established if the product is not run on a separate line or a complete wet cleaning is performed between allergen and non-allergen containing products.