What are the Challenges with Allergen Management?

You probably know someone who has an intolerance or an allergy for something. Let’s focus on allergens in the food industry.

Although all foods have the potential to cause an allergic reaction, most food allergies are caused by 14 common food allergens. However, did you know that these common food allergens might be different from country to country? And did you know that also the severity food safety authorities attribute to these allergens might be different?

Every country has it’s own legislation referring to allergens, and these legislations are not always easy to find and to understand. In other words, this is a huge challenge.

Next to this many of us produce food that is put on the market in several countries. So, yes you have to be aware of these specific requirements of these countries too.

Secondly, many of us buy several ingredients from overall of the world. Therefore, we also need to know the country of origin, the name of the suppliers of these ingredients and along with this, whether the ingredient could contain an allergen.

<p> <img src="allergen management.jpg" alt="Overview Allergen Management tasks"> Aspects of Allergen Management ... </p>

Questions I have for you

Can you easily find all the information that you need? How about a clear overview of your raw materials and the check that these raw materials (might) contain allergens. Do you have such an overview? In short, does your overview help you with your work and make your work efficient?

 

What tasks are related to Allergen Management?

Allergen Management contains many difficult tasks. In short you can think about:

  • You need to manage your R&D and Purchase Department. They are the ones that will start the search for new or different ingredients
  • You need to manage your Suppliers. Your supplier might have changed an ingredient
  • You need to manage your Cleaning. You might cause cross-contamination
  • Manage your Labels
  • With all of these changes you also need to manage your HACCP-plan

 

How to Improve Your Allergen Management System

I know this is a crucial topic and contains so many aspects. Where do you start? What can you improve?

Let me help you with this, so you can improve your system. Let’s start at the beginning what you can do to improve:

  • Identify all relevant Allergens for your company
  • Find out which route allergens might take in your facility
  • Find out if your cleaning is sufficient to remove the allergens
  • Know your risks regarding cross-contamination
  • Know your risks regarding labelling and allergens

 

Training on Allergen Management

All GFSI-guidelines acquire that people are trained. Therefor we all provide a lot of trainings on our CCP’s and OPRP’s. However, training on Allergen Management is not common. Next to this, often after following a training you learned a lot about WHY it is so important that you take action. On the other hand, most of the courses don’t provide you the information of HOW to implement and improve your system. And that’s exactly the difference of all the courses of Food Safety Experts and all the other courses you can find. We, at Food Safety Experts, focus on the HOW. I know this will give you a lot of tools to implement and improve your situation.

In short, check out our training. You will have one year access to the online training. This will give you the time to implement what you have learned. You can watch the training as often as you would like to. Next to this, you will receive a certificate that you followed a training on Allergen Management. For more information: Must Haves For Effective Allergen Management

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QFS Mastery Program

At Food Safety Experts we have our QFS Mastery Program. This Program contains 24 modules with different topics related to food safety. And Allergen Management is one of the modules. In this module you will receive ± 2.5 hours of video lessons on HOW to Effectively Upgrade Your Allergen Management System and ± 10 downloads that you can implement in your organization.

In conclusion, this Program will give you a huge boost as a professional and for your company. For more information, please visit our website QFS Mastery Program.

 

Food Safety Experts Services

Other Interesting services of Food Safety Experts:

QFS Training Repository

QFS Success Coaching

QFS Mentoring

 

Blogs Food Safety Experts

Interesting blogs of Food Safety Experts:

Allergen Management

6 Areas to Improve Allergen Management

Foreign Body in Products