The new recommendations on food allergen thresholds from the ad hoc Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on Risk Assessment of Food Allergens have been published. The FAO/WHO team of Markus Lipp, Kang Zhou, Christine Kopko and Haruka Igarashi continuously supported our group and successfully shipped us around numerous cliffs we were encountering during the consultation. Also, a big thank you goes to Rene Crevel, the chair of this round of consultation, and Ben Remington, our rapporteur.
Our expert group consisted of numerous stakeholders including scientists, regulators, physicians, clinicians and risk managers from academia, government and the food industry.
We took into consideration several approaches to define threshold levels, which included
- thresholds based on what analytical methods can provide at present,
- no observed adverse effect Level [NOAEL] + uncertainty factor [UF],
- benchmark dose combined or not with the application of a margin of exposure, and
- probabilistic hazard assessment
After numerous discussions on each of the possible approaches, we agreed that that the principle of establishing a benchmark dose (without the application of a margin of exposure) and the probabilistic hazard assessment approach were the best-suited approaches.
As one of the outcomes, the following threshold doses based on ED05 are recommended:
| Allergen | RfD Recommendation (mg total protein from the allergenic source) |
|---|---|
| Walnut (and Pecan*) | 1.0 |
| Cashew (and Pistachio*) | 1.0 |
| Almond** | 1.0 |
| Peanut | 2.0 |
| Egg | 2.0 |
| Hazelnut | 3.0 |
| Wheat | 5.0 |
| Fish | 5.0 |
| Shrimp | 200.0 |
| Milk | [decision pending based on further data analysis] |
| Sesame | [decision pending based on further data analysis] |
* see considerations in full report
** provisional
The summary report can be found on the FAO website.
