We can now know the exact proteins that cause an allergic reactions.
A food allergen has the potential to kill someone within only a few minutes if treatment is not given to them immediately. This is the reason that food businesses all over the world must do everything to prevent unintended allergens being in any of their products.
If an intended allergen is present in a food, according to all food laws worldwide the packaging must contain accepted information about it. This is to give the purchasers and consumers an informed choice.
It is the unintended food allergens that are the big problem. These are the ones that get into the food, primarily through cross contamination, and should not be there as they are not in the recipe or ingredient list.
Having various controls in place, like cleaning, training, separation etc, will go a long way to preventing these unintended allergens from being a problem.
However confirmation can only really be done of the effectiveness of these controls by testing the food and the contact surfaces.
So food allergen testing is a major issue for all manufacturers and most other food businesses.
The original testing method was using a special method known as ELISA. However it did not provide an immediate result, so much work has been ongoing around the world to produce a rapid read test that is accurate and effective at all concentrations.
A new method has been developed that is a twist on the testing of foods. In this method, the actual proteins that cause individual allergic reactions in people can be identified. This will allow these people to know exactly which foods that must avoid. If the manufacturers then have good controls in place with regular testing, these people will most likely avoid having an allergic reaction in future.
The huge potential of this new method is that once the exact proteins that cause an individual’s allergic reaction are known, a program of de-sensitising them can be attempted.
This new method was published recently in the journal Analytical Chemistry Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland used a well-established technique called immunoaffinity capillary electrophoresis (IACE) to test the blood of a sample of people allergic to cow’s milk.
The results showed that the method can accurately and rapidly identify the specific proteins that caused the allergic reaction to cow’s milk in those tested. The conclusion from this research is that the same method can be used to identify the exact proteins in the other food allergens that cause allergic reactions in specific people. Effectively it seems that it will be able to provide a map of the exact proteins that a person is allergic to.
Written by Rachelle Williams, The Green Food Safety Coach.