The recent recall of a popular salad dressing due to undeclared allergens highlights the vital importance of following facility policies in food manufacturing and packaging plants. Errors involving product contamination (48 percent), misbranding (27 percent), and undeclared allergens (16 percent) remain the three leading causes of food recalls.1 The good news is that many ingredient- and allergen-related incidents are preventable if plant employees receive and understand the proper training.
Allergen- and gluten-related recalls of products typically come down to two causes: intentional and unintentional adulteration. In cases of intentional adulteration, a person or business intentionally transfers an allergen or other gluten grain [rye, barley, or wheat—the latter of which is already classified as an allergen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] into a product that is not supposed to have these ingredients, causing a major threat to consumers. The main reason a business may commit this act of food fraud is for economic gain. An example of intentional adulteration occurred in 2015 when ground peanut shells were added to packaged cumin spice. Fortunately, plants today typically have a food defense program in place to prevent this kind of adulteration. When a low-risk ingredient is found to be adulterated, it is important to institute policies to protect at-risk consumers.