The current allergy risk assessment strategy is not satisfactory, because it is not complete (missing data on effect of processing, exposure, effect on immune cells, protein transport, sensitizing properties, etc.) and often lacks good interpretable results. The Action will therefore bring into focus the current state of the art of allergy risk assessment, what are the missing links and which tools are not useful and can be omitted and what could be usefully added? Other topics to focus on are: how an unacceptable rate of sensitisation to a novel protein (concept of rare vs. common allergens) can be defined, how the results from the above mentioned topics can be implemented in the risk assessment strategy, how the regulatory authorities can be involved in this concept and disseminate this to food companies and how the generated knowledge can be used in the development of new safe food products.
Working Group 4 will collect data on the current state of the art in allergy risk assessment and critically discuss the applied strategies. The pros and cons of the current strategies will be listed. Based on these findings, the data and knowledge gaps will be identified. The WG will hypothesize on how the results of WG 1, 2 and 3 can be implemented in the current strategy and how an improved strategy will get approval from regulatory authorities and will be accepted within the food industry community.
Objectives will be attained by utilizing several means:
Representatives is this group are food scientists, physiologists, immunologists, risk assessors, clinicians, food companies, biochemists, toxicologists.
WG 4 DEPUTY LEADER
DR. ANNE CONSTABLE
Nestle Research Center
Vers-Chez-Les-Blanc
PO Box 44
Lausanne
Switzerland