Government Chemist hosts MFAN meeting

MFAN, led by Professor Clare Mills, is a forum for research and practice in food allergy. It aims to improve quality of life and safety for people with allergies, enable better provision by businesses and provide tools for allergenic food risk assessment and risk management.

The topic for the meeting was ”Allergen analysis best practice guidance”. The background to the meeting has been described in our collaborative paper on potentially flawed food allergen analysis, which could jeopardise improvement in precautionary allergen labelling and undermine correct risk assessment prior to food recalls.

The meeting was attended by over 30 expert practitioners. These included delegates from academia, the European Commission Joint Research Centre, JRC, MoniQA, ELISA allergen detection platform manufacturers, food retailers, and other technical experts.

The meeting was a truly international event with attendees from the UK, Australia, Austria, Germany, and Italy. Electronic remote participation by scientists from the UK, USA, South Africa and Australia ensured a wide range of views were heard. The meeting produced high-level ideas and discussions and very positive feedback.

The outputs from the meeting will include a guidance document on food allergen analysis.

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