Technical University of Denmark, Anker Engelundsvej 1, 2860, Lyngby, Denmark.
DSM Food Specialties B.V., Alexander Fleminglaan 1, 2613 AX, Delft, Netherlands.
Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2020 Nov;117:104751. doi: 10.1016/j.yrtph.2020.104751. Epub 2020 Aug 5.
Substantial progress has been made in characterising the risk associated with exposure to allergens in food. However, absence of agreement on what risk is tolerable has made it difficult to set quantitative limits to manage that risk and protect allergic consumers effectively. This paper reviews scientific progress in the area and the diverse status of allergen management approaches and lack of common standards across different jurisdictions, including within the EU. This lack of regulation largely explains why allergic consumers find Precautionary Allergen Labelling confusing and cannot rely on it. We reviewed approaches to setting quantitative limits for a broad range of food safety hazards to identify the reasoning leading to their adoption. This revealed a diversity of approaches from pragmatic to risk-based, but we could not find clear evidence of the process leading to the decision on risk acceptability. We propose a framework built around the criteria suggested by Murphy and Gardoni (2008) for approaches to defining tolerable risks. Applying these criteria to food allergy, we concluded that sufficient knowledge exists to implement the framework, including sufficient expertise across the whole range of stakeholders to allow opinions to be heard and respected, and a consensus to be achieved.
在描述与食物过敏原暴露相关的风险方面已经取得了重大进展。然而，对于可接受的风险程度缺乏共识，这使得难以对风险进行定量限制，从而无法有效保护过敏消费者。本文回顾了该领域的科学进展，以及过敏原管理方法的多样性和不同司法管辖区（包括欧盟内部）缺乏共同标准的情况。这种缺乏监管在很大程度上解释了为什么过敏消费者对预防性过敏原标签感到困惑，并且无法依赖它。我们回顾了为广泛的食品安全危害设定定量限制的方法，以确定导致其采用的推理。这揭示了从务实到基于风险的各种方法，但我们没有找到明确的证据表明决策是基于风险可接受性的。我们提出了一个框架，该框架围绕着 Murphy 和 Gardoni（2008）提出的用于定义可接受风险的标准构建。将这些标准应用于食物过敏，我们得出的结论是，已经存在足够的知识来实施该框架，包括整个利益相关者范围内的足够专业知识，以便能够听取和尊重意见，并达成共识。
