Risk assessment forms the basis of allergen management. But despite the development of robust allergen risk assessment approaches, practical use of these is not yet widespread in the food industry. The ILSI Expert Group on ‘Food Allergen Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA)’ has published a Guidance document and tools to support better QRA use by food businesses.
In publishing this Guidance, the ILSI Expert Group aims to promote consistency in documentation, decision making and the application of food allergen quantitative risk assessment. While not taking an allergen labelling or risk management decision for the user, rather the Guidance is intended to help them decide when to use food allergen quantitative risk assessment, and how to use it most effectively.
A range of tools and documents have also been developed for use with the Guidance:
- Cross-contact / Contamination estimate calculator: A practical calculator to estimate the UAP in a product can be found here.
- QRA calculation worksheet v4.4: download here.
- Incidents form: For download here. See Chapter 4 of the Guidance for more information.
- Sampling & Analysis form: download here.
A number of webinars and workshops were undertaken throughout the development of the Guidance and tools. Digital recordings of these forums are freely available:
- Introduction to the New ILSI Europe Activity on Food Allergen Quantitative Risk Assessment, 29 June 2020
- Protected: Food Allergen Quantitative Risk Assessment, 29 October 2020
- 2nd Food Allergen Quantitative Risk Assessment Event, 22 and 24 June 2021
- 3rd Food Allergen Quantitative Risk Assessment Event, 20 and 23 September 2021
Download the Guidance document here.
