Two important meetings took place in the last week of October, both meeting in close proximity to each other, in Gaithersburg and Rockville (Maryland, US). Both included the same topics in their respective programs: food fraud and food allergens.
The NIST meeting in Gaithersburg had a strong focus on reference materials, and covered additional topics like microbiological and chemical contamination. The meeting was opened by Melissa Philips (NIST) who welcomed the participants from five continents. All speakers were giving presentations at high level, the most notable ones were given by Pamela Wilger (Cargill) on the risk management of biological risk in production sites; Jupiter Yeung and Todd DeKryger (Nestlé) on supply chain management for protein allergens in food and Scott Hegenbart (Conagra Foods) on protein allergen management in food production. My scientific presentation discussed the opinion of neighboring European member states leading to threshold levels of food allergens, which differ by no less than 100 times.
Melissa Phillips (NIST)
Overall, it became clear that the the food industry faces numerous challenges when cleaning production lines from food allergens, due to very low reference doses and the absence of reliable analytical methods at those levels.
The MoniQA meeting in Rockville, hosted by US Pharmacopeia, was opened by Steve Gendel of USP, Roland Poms (Secretary General of MoniQA) and myself as current MoniQA president. While the topics were food fraud and food allergens, the meeting focused primary on food allergen management and legal challenges in different jurisdictions. We heard excellent presentations from Melanie Downs (ULN), Cesare Varallo (foodlawlatest), Manuela Beatrisotti (Barilla), Amanda Manolis (Thermo Fisher Scientific), Richard Cantrill (MoniQA Past President), Michael Walker (LGC), Tony Floyd (IFIC) and Eric Garber (FDA).
Discussion panel participants (from left to right): Steve Gendel (USP), Jupiter Yeung (Nestle), Atef Idriss (MEFOSA), Amanda Manolis (Thermo Fisher Scientific), Manuela Beatrisotti (Barilla), Bert Popping (FOCOS) – MoniQA International Symposium on Food Fraud Prevention and Effective Food Allergen Management
Major takeaways were the fact that, while the number of methods for testing food allergens and food fraud increases, the standardization procedures of today cannot keep pace. Also, there is an urgent need to use method performance criteria, which determine if a method is fit for purpose, rather than waiting years until a method has become a standard.
My presentation focused on the benefits and drawbacks of mobile testing devices. Michael McLaughlin (FDA) commented that such devices would be very beneficial for smart sampling approaches.
