Food allergens are increasingly being tested during product quality control. The Regulation on declaring, labeling and advertising of food, lists 14 substances that are considered to cause allergies or intolerances, and must be stated on the declaration.
These are e.g. milk, eggs, fish, crabs, cereals containing gluten (wheat, oats, barley, rye), nuts (hazelnuts almonds, walnuts, cashew nuts, macadamia nuts, pistachios, Brazil nuts, pecans, Queensland nuts and their products), peanuts, soya, celery, sesame, mustard and its products, lupins, molluscs and all their products, as well as sulphites in a concentration of at least 10 mg / kg.
An increasing number of people are affected by food allergies and that number in the world is growing.
Consumption of foods with supported allergens, in certain persons, can cause a reaction of the skin or gastrointestinal, respiratory or cardiovascular system or anaphylactic shock.
In order to ensure the safety of food products with regard to allergens, it is necessary that it is properly declared and controlled. The control is most effective if it starts in the production plant and includes raw materials, semi-finished and final products, as well as swabs of production lines and rinsing water.
Sensitive and reliable methods such as immunoensimatic protein detection and PCR methods based on the analysis of isolated DNA are used for the detection and quantification of allergens.
