Allergen testing is a vital safeguarding process required for all food production, manufacturers, and any kind of hospitality or industry working in or around food consumption. By law, any presence of food allergens must be labelled on a pre-packaged food item and businesses selling loose food must also specify potential allergens. This also means that the potential for any cross-contamination must also be mentioned.

While technically, any food can be classed as an allergen if it causes an allergic reaction, there are 14 main allergens that UK food business must list under food law. As legislation requires that the presence of food allergens be clearly labelled on packaging, allergen management to eliminate and prevent cross-contamination is crucial.

Where multiple allergens are handled on-site, different methods of detection, cleaning and validation may be required, and the effectiveness of cleaning procedures must be validated and documented. Validation should be done by accredited testing methods and wherever possible quantifiable. Lateral flow tests and ATP testing can be used but are suitable for verification only.

As well as being used for environmental monitoring, many LFD allergen tests from Hygiena™ and 3M™ can be used on a raw product, liquid and solid end-product and CIP rinse water to detect allergen residue.

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