Arguably one of the key factors in ensuring the effective control of allergenic proteins is the training, awareness and understanding of staff, in particular the key areas are:
- The potential harm that an allergen can cause in an individual consumer.
- The need for maintaining segregation controls in raw material or preparation areas.
- The need for effective and diligent inter-product cleaning, with special reference to preparation or assembly areas where multiple allergens may be handled throughout a working shift.
- The need to ensure that hands are effectively washed and dried when changing products and/or production lines.
- The reasons behind any colour-coding systems that have been established.
The key to establishing, and maintaining, operative compliance in maintaining the control over allergens is to ensure that staff understand the potential risk to consumers if a cross-contamination incident occurs as a result of their activities. Holchem has found, whilst undertaking staff awareness training that an understanding of the potentially fatal consequences of a failure to control an allergen within a food processing environment has led to an increased diligence by operatives and management – particularly where a delegate within the training session either suffers personally, or has a close family member, with a food allergy / intolerance. Training session should deliberately be kept short and to a limited number of individuals at once to maximise buy-in from those present and reduce the psychological reasoning that allergen control is “somebody else’s problem” which can result from a large delegate group.
As part of the Anaphylaxis Campaign’s standard there is a requirement for personnel to attend more detailed training sessions and a number of nationally accredited allergen management qualifications are available.