Allergen Awareness (for Manufacturing)

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Introduction to Allergen Awareness

An allergy is a reaction the body has to allergens.

**Allergies are common for children. ** As a child gets older, it's possible for the allergies to go away, although a lot of allergies lasts for a long time.

It's possible to develop allergies as an adult, even if you were not previously allergic to it.

**Allergies can affect your daily tasks. ** It can cause you harm when receiving, storing, packing, or basically being in contact with a product that contains allergens.

The immune system of those who have allergies recognize allergens as harmful or foreign.

Before we continue, let's establish our baseline.

Allergic Reactions, Anaphylaxis, and Coeliac Disease

We learned in the previous lesson what allergens are and how they can cause allergic reactions.

Allergic reactions commonly arise within a few minutes of exposure. Sometimes, it slowly develops over the next few hours.

Several scenarios in manufacturing can result in exposure to undeclared allergens. Even if most allergic reactions are mild, severe reactions can still happen.

Severe allergic reaction (Anaphylaxis)

Immediate treatment is required with anaphylaxis. **How to treat anaphylaxis? ** Epinephrine Commonly in the form of an auto-injector "pen" device, epinephrine must be administered within minutes of the first sign of allergic reaction.

Coeliac disease

Do you still remember where gluten is most commonly found? Select all the correct answers

Higher-risk of exposure can be caused by the following: Product or raw material labelling errors Cross-contamination Inappropriate facility design Mistakes when handling rework Inappropriate production sequence Inadequate cleaning or sanitation Lack of change management Incorrect handling of allergen-containing ingredients

Allergen Control and Risk Management

We learned from the previous lesson that allergens pose a serious health hazard both to you and to consumers.

This emphasizes the importance of controlling and managing allergens in the supply chain and production process.

Before receiving shipments, check for spills or damages.

Make sure that the items are what you ordered.

Allergenic products must be stored separate or at least 1.5 meters away from non-allergenic products.

Store them at the bottom part of the racks to avoid spills from items that might be placed under them.

Use color-coded tags to identify products with allergens.

Which of the following do you think are the two most common causes for allergy-related product recalls?

Make sure that the allergenic ingredients are emphasized on the labels. They can be listed in bold, contrasting colors or by underlining them.

When cleaning, take note of the following facts: Microbiologically clean and allergen clean are different. It can be difficult to remove food proteins from surfaces, most specially heated or denatured ones. Stickiness of proteins to surfaces may vary. In removing allergenic food soils, wet cleaning can be the most effective method but evaluate first. It is more challenging to achieve "allergen clean" when cleaning dry environments. Some older processing equipments are not designed to be cleaned.