Agricultural allergen cross-contact – farm to fork
Undeclared allergens are often present in food due to cross-contact that occurred somewhere along the supply chain. But it is challenging to determine and assess the risk of allergen cross-contact in agricultural raw materials, because of the complexity of supply chains, the sporadic and unpredictable nature of allergens, and sometimes a lack of available information.
In line with the Allergen Bureau’s vision to lead the global food industry in best-practice allergen management, a volunteer group of proactive Allergen Bureau members have developed a practical guideline and raw material risk-assessment matrix questionnaire to help the food industry assess and manage agricultural and raw material cross-contact risks.
What is Agricultural Allergen Cross-Contact?
It is the presence of food-allergen cross-contact material in non-allergen agricultural commodities, due to uncontrolled agricultural, harvesting, transport, storage and primary processing practices.
Why does it happen?
Agricultural co-mingling is a term used for the presence of variable amounts of one crop that may be found in another crop. Some of the main factors that contribute to agricultural cross-contact are:
- Agricultural practices and steps, including:
- Cross-contact from adjacent fields and crops
- Crop rotation
- Use of shared farming equipment
- Crop cleaning practices
- Shared bulk transportation
- Shared bulk storage
- Primary processing
- Lack of allergen management knowledge and control by farmers, commodity traders and other groups that participate in the commodity supply chain.
- Allowing foreign material and grains in agricultural commodities.
Examples of Allergen Agricultural Cross-contact
Cross-contact may vary from one region to another, and even from one year to the next. The following are some examples, but the list is not exhaustive:
- Oats contaminated with wheat, rye or barley.
- Garlic contaminated with peanut.
- Maize contaminated with soy and/or wheat.
- Wheat contaminated with mustard.
How do I manage the threat of cross-contact?
Step 1: Identify allergen risks
The aim is to identify unintentionally added allergens that may be present due to agricultural cross-contact. Because producers rely on information supplied almost exclusively by their suppliers, this can be a complex and time-consuming process. For this reason, it is important to also engage in conversation with and ask the right questions of your supplier, to obtain information from them rather than relying exclusively on product information forms, specifications and questionnaires. It is essential that you think carefully about what questions to ask and how to ask them.
The Allergen Bureau’s Assessing Agricultural cross-contact guideline gives advice on:
- which agricultural commodities are often associated with cross-contact allergens.
- questions you can ask to help you identify agricultural allergen cross-contact.
Step 2: Assess the level of the allergen cross-contact risk
The objective is to determine a risk rating for the raw material by using the Allergen Bureau’s Raw Material Risk Matrix Questionnaire. This can be used to inform decision-making further along in the supply chain, inform sampling strategies for analytical analysis, and understand the presence and prevalence of cross-contact to inform your Precautionary Allergen Labelling (PAL) statement.
The Raw Material Risk Matrix Questionnaire provides guidance on how to assess the risk associated with agricultural commodities that may contain allergens due to cross-contact.
Are you interested in learning more about this topic? Contact us today and we will help you understand the risks associated with agricultural and raw material cross-contact, and give guidance on which questions to ask, how to develop testing plans, and how to assess and interpret risk.
Other articles and resources you may be interested in:
Allergen and Food Testing Events
Meaningful Allergen Quantitative Risk Assessment
Allergen Precautionary Labelling: VITAL®