Traces of the foods that some people are allergic to get into products by accident, during the manufacturing process or during transport or storage. it is a cross-contamination, a frequently under estimated problem.

How to prevent food cross contamination with a food allergen? How to correcly advice food allergic consumers about this risk for certain foods? To answer these and other questions, the UK Food Standard Agency developed a booklet with useful tips that help people dealing with cross contamination and preventing it when cooking or packaging foods.

One of the booklet’s main recommendations is about food labelling: a label that should be used in circunstamces in which excluding cross contamination is not possible, when manifacturers can’t exclude that an allergenic food have got into the product by accident. It is called “advisory labelling” and it is a phrase on the label as “may contain X” or “not suitable for someone with X allergy”.

This means that even though the allergen has not been deliberately added to the product, you cannot be sure that it does not accidentally contain small amounts.

Moreover, the guide suggest an ideal approach to avoiding cross-contamination with allergenic foods when cooking, among which:

• Making the food containing the allergenic food on a separate day, or at the end of the day, and then thoroughly clean the production area
• Storaging allergenic raw materials away from other ingredients, for example in sealed plastic bins that are clearly marked or colour-coded.
• Using separate suppliers when handling allergenic and non allergenic foods
• Cleaning thoroughly cooking areas, in a way that reduces the risk of cross-contamination. In fact, sery small amounts of some allergens, such as nuts, can cause severe allergicreactions in sensitive people.

Source: Food Standard Agency – Food Allergy: what to consider when labelling food Back