Food Allergy Task Force

Objectives
The Task Force aims at fostering an international evidence-based consensus on how to assess the risk from allergenic foods. Once identified the agreed method, the Task Force envisage developing tools to help manage the risks and protect all consumers.

Impact

• The Task Force has worked on different components of risk assessment, ranging from the identification and characterisation of the allergen hazard, to the consideration of its prevalence and the level to which consumers are exposed. Moving beyond the usual tripartite model (academia, government, and industry), the Task Force involves allergic patient organisations as well as health care practitioners in many of its expert groups and has been a long – term valued partner in major European Union (EU) projects on food allergy, such as EUROPREVALL, and iFAAM.
• The recent Task Force publication proposes a framework to help define what risk is tolerable for food allergens and provides guidance to those dealing with food allergen risk assessment and management. It is valuable not only for food industry and public authorities, but for patient organisations and allergic consumers. The guidance is being widely disseminated to all relevant stakeholders, including consumers, to increase the information flow and thus the confidence on the latest food products and labels.