Health Canada's Current Surveillance Activities for Undeclared Food Allergens

Michael Abbott, Chantal Cleroux, Jean-Marc Gelinas, Arman Alimkulov

Bureau of Chemical Safety - Food Directorate - Sir Frederick Banting Research Centre, Health Canada - Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0L2 (Canada).

Surveillance activities can provide important information about the nature of products that are available in the marketplace. The food allergen program at Health Canada has recently carried out two distinct surveillance activities. In the first case, a small survey was conducted on gluten-free foods, using two different commercial test kits for gluten. Results of this survey, including a comparison of the results from the two different test kits will be discussed.

In the second case, a larger survey of chocolate and granola bars was conducted. Many of the samples collected had some kind of precautionary labelling warning about the possible presence of one or more food allergens. Samples were analyzed for peanut, almond, hazelnut and brazilnut. Survey results, including a small number of samples found to contain undeclared allergens, will be discussed. The presentation will also look at how often, and at what levels, allergens were detected in the samples with precautionary labelling.