This book includes practical advice and guidance to the food industry on how to manage food allergens in production and deliver safe foods to food allergic consumers. The National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, together with international researchers has contributed to the book.
An international group of clinicians, researchers, and public and industrial risk assessors and risk managers have combined their knowledge and results from the EU project EuroPrevall (The Prevalence, Cost and Basis of Food Allergy in Europe) into this book that offers background and practical advice on how to manage unintended presence of food allergens in food products.
Research leader Charlotte Bernhard Madsen, National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, has edited the book in collaboration with René Crevel, Clare Mills and Steven Taylor. The book is aimed at risk assessors and risk managers in food industry and public authorities managing allergens in food on a population basis. It can also be used when teaching food safety.
Background, insight and concrete cases
The book is organised in four sections.
Section 1, Food allergy: causes, prevalence and impacts provide background for understanding the context and rationale for food allergy as a problem in society. It gives an overview of how patients experience daily life with food allergy and how it impacts their lives. It describes food allergy as a disease and which foods cause allergy, as well as the epidemiology of food allergy.
Section 2, Allergen thresholds and risk assessment describes how clinicians determine the amount of allergenic food causing a reaction. It suggests quantities of different allergenic foods that can be considered to present minimal risk, and describes how they are derived, and how these data are used in risk assessment, both theoretically and in practice.
Section 3, Risk management of gluten gives an overview of the gluten induced disease coeliac disease with emphasis on diagnosis, prevalence, prevention and management.
Section 4, Practical food allergen risk management focusses on the practical aspects. How allergenic food is managed in a factory and in catering businesses. It has stories illustrating how concrete problems with food allergens in production were handled and explaining the role of the health service professionals. It describes analytical detection methods for food allergens and how processing can alter the allergenicity of foods. It covers effective communication with consumers including the use of ‘May contain’ labelling. Lastly, it gives a short overview of legislation and useful places to keep updated.
Read more
“Risk Management for Food Allergy” can be ordered at Elsevier .
The introductory parts of the book and the first pages of selected chapters can be downloaded below:
List of contents (pdf)
Foreword (pdf)
Introduction (pdf)
Chapter 1: Living with Food Allergy: Cause for Concern (pdf)
Chapter 5: Thresholds or ‘How Much Is Too Much?’ (pdf)
Chapter 6: From Hazard to Risk – Assessing the Risk (pdf)
Chapter 9: Managing Food Allergens: Case Histories and How They Were Handled (pdf)
Chapter 13: Detecting and Measuring Allergens in Food (pdf)