Food News

AGROLAB Italia has extended the list of accredited food allergens with E.L.I.S.A. and PCR real-time techniques.

What are food allergens?

Allergens are food substances, harmless to most people, that cause allergies of various kinds and dangerousness to some susceptible individuals.

According to recent estimates food allergies affect about 5% of childrens under 3 years and about 4% of adults.

Regulatory aspetcs

In order to guarantee the safety of final consumers, It is mandatory to indicate in labels all food allergens (according to European regulation 1169/2011). Since no threshold levels has been fixed, the presence of allergens has to be report in food labels.

Technical aspects

AGROLAB Italia analyzes food allergens with PCR real-time and E.L.I.S.A techniques.

PCR real-time technique consists of the identification of genomic fragments encoding target allergenic proteins and it is based on the DNA amplification by real time polymerase chain reaction (PCR- real time).

E.L.I.S.A. (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) is an immunoassay and it consists of the direct identification of allergenic proteins.

What AGROLAB Italia could do to support you?

Agrolab Italia is able to identify a wide range of food allergens: gluten, egg, soy, milk, peanut, hazelnut, almond, walnut, cashew, pistachio, lupine, sesame, mustard, celery,

fish, crustacean, shellfish, applying in-house validated methods and normalized methods.

Author: Dr. Frank Mörsberger

BACK