Food security must be considered in parallel with physical, chemical and microbiological risks. Thus, management of allergen in the food industry should be seen as an integral part of the management of existing food safety, and should take into account all operations from raw material to manufacturing and packaging of the finished product.
Many manufacturers produce different products in the same factory, using the same production lines. Single manufacture lines for multiple products can cause cross-contamination of production lines, particularly by food allergens. In addition, raw materials may be composites products that contain undeclared ingredients. Hence, management of allergens consists must address two points: (1) identification of allergens or derivatives in raw materials received
from the supplier that were added intentionally and (2)
presence of any allergen arising from cross-contamination in the
suppliers premises by (a) assessing risk of cross-contamination at
installations level (e.g., production lines, machinery, etc.) and (b)
environmental pollution using swabs to keep track of cleaning
and detection of allergens on surfaces and equipment.
Thus, detection of fish material using the proposed method was
developed with samples encompassing the entire production chain
(Table 3).
Overall, our study demonstrated the presence of fish contamination
in different parts of the production chain. Moreover, application