The document updates previous EFSA opinions on food ingredients or substances that are known to cause adverse reactions – including cereals containing gluten, milk and dairy products, eggs, nuts, peanuts, soy, fish, crustaceans, molluscs, celery, lupin, sesame, mustard, and sulphites
“In line with EFSA’s policy on openness and transparency and in order for EFSA to receive comments from the scientific community and stakeholders, EFSA has launched a public consultation on the draft document developed by the NDA Panel of EFSA,” said EFSA.
“The Opinion relates to IgE- and non IgE-13 mediated food allergy, to coeliac disease, and to adverse reactions to sulphites in food, and does not address non-14 immune mediated adverse reactions to food.”
The draft opinion (found here) includes information on the prevalence of food allergy in unselected populations, on proteins identified as food allergens, on cross-reactivities, the effects of food processing on allergenicity of foods and ingredients, and on the methods for the detection of allergens and allergenic foods.
In addition the draft tackles the doses observed to trigger adverse reactions in sensitive individuals, and the approaches which have been used to derive individual and population thresholds for selected allergenic foods.
Interested parties are invited to submit written comments via this link by 8 August 2014, said EFSA. Further information on the call, and guidelines for submitting comments can be found here.