title: Prioritisation of allergenic foods with respect to public health relevance: Report from an ILSI Europe Food Allergy Task Force Expert Group.
abstract: Regulators and risk managers in general need to decide whether an allergenic food or ingredient is of such public health importance that it needs to be actively managed. There is therefore a need to scale the relative allergenicity of foods and ingredients according to the hazards they pose. Objective criteria increase transparency and trust in this decision-making process and its conclusions. This paper proposes a framework that allows categorisation and prioritisation of allergenic foods according to their public health importance. The challenge is to find a basis on which the allergenicity of foods can best be described and a method to combine the relevant measures of allergenicity into a scoring system that prioritises allergenic foods on the basis of their public health relevance. The framework is designed in accordance with the generic risk analysis principles used in food safety and can be used by regulators to decide whether or not a specific allergenic food or ingredient is of sufficient public health importance that it warrants regulation (i.e. mandatory labelling) when used in the production of food products.
authors.affiliation: TNO, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Geert
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Houben
authors.affiliation: Imperial College London, UK.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Burney
authors.affiliation: Food Standards Agency, UK.
authors.forename: Chun-Han
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.affiliation: Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre, Unilever, Bedford, UK.
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Crevel
authors.affiliation: University of Groningen, University Medical Centre Groningen, Department of Pediatric Pulmonology and Pediatric Allergy, and GRIAC Research Institute, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Anthony
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dubois
authors.affiliation: International Life Sciences Institute-ILSI Europe, Belgium. Electronic address: publications@ilsieurope.be.
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Faludi
authors.affiliation: TNO, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Rinke
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Klein Entink
authors.affiliation: University Medical Centre Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: André
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Knulst
authors.affiliation: University of Nebraska, USA.
authors.forename: Steve
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.affiliation: Coca - Cola Services, Belgium.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ronsmans
mesh_terms: D000485:Allergens / Q000633:toxicity*; D005060:Europe; D005512:Food Hypersensitivity; D006801:Humans; D015980:Public Health Practice; D018570:Risk Assessment
chemical_list: D000485:Allergens
keywords: Allergenic foods; Allergenicity scaling; Labelling; Prioritization; Public health importance; Risk management