workshops

In this symposium allergy health professionals will take a deep dive into food allergen management in the food industry. Enhance your understanding of industry allergen risk assessments, allergen labelling and ‘may contain’, so you can help your patients with choosing appropriate foods.

Symposium topics and speakers include:

Dr Paul Turner – Impact of allergen cross contamination and precautionary labelling on consumers with food allergy and their caregivers

TBC – How clinical food challenge data is used to set reference doses for PAL.

Jasmine Lacis-Lee (Allergen Bureau) – How the food industry manages food allergens, types of cross contact, what an industry scientific risk assessment process looks like.

Alan Edwards (NSW Food Authority) –  How incidents are investigated when things go wrong.

This will be followed by a panel discussion exploring what advice we should be giving to patients and food service providers. The panel includes the symposium speakers plus Maria Said (CEO, Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia) and Dr Vicki McWilliam (MCRI, Allergy Dietitian, AdvAPD). Facilitated by Ingrid Roche, APD, National Allergy Council.

 Join us at this symposium to answer your questions:

• How are food allergens managed from paddock to package?
• What is a food allergen scientific quantitative risk assessment?
• What is the difference between particulate vs dispersible food allergen cross contact (cross contamination)?
• What is the science behind the reference doses for PAL?
• Why can’t you just rely on allergy testing of products?
• What does it mean if a product doesn’t have PAL?
• Who is using meaningful PAL statements?
• What is the actual risk to the consumer of cross contamination of allergens
• What advice should I give my patients about PAL?
• What should foodservices do with products and ingredients with PAL?

The Allergen Bureau and the Food Research and Resource Program (FARRP) are combining their expertise and share their knowledge. Along with other guest speakers, this session will aim to answer the questions businesses ask about allergen analysis and sampling.

• What are the different methods available for allergen analysis.
• What information is required prior to testing, whether it might be testing conducted internally or sent to an ternal laboratory
• What types of methods are appropriate, in which circumstances? When testing ingredients / foods, for environmental monitoring or when verifying risk assessments.
• What does a best practice approach to cleaning validation look like. Differences in approaches for dry and wet production facilities.
• How to interpret analytical results and how results apply to qualitative risk assessment
• How sampling should relate to why testing is being conducted. For example, when verifying cleaning efficacy, checking ingredient risk or confirming labelling compliance for products
• What considerations are required when allergens may be in particulate form, and provide guidance on other approaches to assess risks

The interactive session with provide practical demonstrations on rapid methods and provide attendees with scenarios to put theory into practice.