instore - March 2018 - 42

FOOD SAFETY

Allergen detection
by Ryan Atkinson

llergens are serious business, in everyday consumer life and in the life of a
food production facility. Central kitchens
and intermediate bakeries are among the
businesses with the greatest need to have allergens under control.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, there were 437 food product recalls in
2015, with 39 attributed to bakery products.
Thirty-two of those were blamed on allergens, ranging from milk, undeclared peanuts, tree nuts, egg, soy and wheat. The next
year, out of 96 bakery recalls, 56 were due
to allergens. Peanuts were involved in 22 of
those recalls.
Recalls for allergens have been a persistent
problem for a number of years now, with little to no sign of decline. And while there are
many possible steps in a sanitation strategy
that can help curb problems, one of the very
first steps can be among the most important.

Testing for allergens before
running a product through
a line can help drastically
reduce problems, according to Fernado Mora,
western regional sales
manager for Hygiena, a foodservice solutions company
headquartered in the U.S. in
Camarillo, California.
The company offers a pair of
tests - AllerSnap and AllerFlow - that
serve as quick indicators for allergenic proteins.
"The way my customers use it, the intent
is that it's a quick changeover," Mora says.
"Typically, they're running an allergen
through a line and then they're cleaning
it, testing it and making sure that the line
is totally clean before they process a nonallergen."

Photo: ©Xavier - stock.adobe.com

Both tests feature a color metric swab,
meant to allow the end user a quick reaction
in a timely manner to understand if they've
adequately cleaned food production contact
surfaces.
"Basically, you're trying to control the
amount of potential allergenic residue that's
leftover that could result in cross-contamination," Mora says.
AllerSnap is a broad range allergen surface
test that verifies proteins have been removed
from surfaces. The self-contained test detects a wide range of allergens, including
shrimp, wheat, peanut, egg, milk, soy, almonds and sesame. The company says this
feature helps eliminate additional costs associated with running specific allergen tests.
"The process we have that is most easily interpreted is by the color metric," Mora says.
"Basically, we put a color table on the swab
itself and then the medium inside the swab
turns a color and then you just match it. It
tells you if it's a pass. Once it gets to a certain color it's a caution and once it gets to a
certain color it's a fail."
Green means clean and purple means reclean, according to the company. The more
protein in the sample, the deeper and darker
the purple becomes.

AllerSnap's color metric swab provides a quick and easy-to-read result, letting users
know if their work surface is free of allergens. Photo: Hygiena

42 * MARCH 2018 * commissary INSIDER

AllerFlow is a gluten-specific test for surfaces. It combines the sample collection

http://stock.adobe.com

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