Can we define a level of protection for allergic consumers that everyone can accept?
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Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Substantial progress has been made in characterising the risk associated with exposure to allergens in food. However, absence of agreement on what risk is tolerable has made it difficult to set quantitative limits to manage that risk and protect allergic consumers effectively. This paper reviews scientific progress in the area and the diverse status of allergen management approaches and lack of common standards across different jurisdictions, including within the EU. This lack of regulation largely explains why allergic consumers find Precautionary Allergen Labelling confusing and cannot rely on it. We reviewed approaches to setting quantitative limits for a broad range of food safety hazards to identify the reasoning leading to their adoption. This revealed a diversity of approaches from pragmatic to risk-based, but we could not find clear evidence of the process leading to the decision on risk acceptability. We propose a framework built around the criteria suggested by Murphy and Gardoni (2008) for approaches to defining tolerable risks. Applying these criteria to food allergy, we concluded that sufficient knowledge exists to implement the framework, including sufficient expertise across the whole range of stakeholders to allow opinions to be heard and respected, and a consensus to be achieved.
Date Issued
2020-11-01
Online Publication Date
2020-08-27T13:59:15Z
Date Acceptance
2020-07-27
ISSN
0273-2300
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal / Book Title
Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology
Volume
117
Copyright Statement
© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
License URI
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32763252
S0273-2300(20)30177-X
Subjects
Decision framework
Food allergy
Risk assessment
Risk management
Tolerable risk
Decision framework
Food allergy
Risk assessment
Risk management
Tolerable risk
1115 Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Toxicology
Publication Status
Published
Country
Netherlands
Article Number
ARTN 104751
Date Publish Online
2020-08-05