Clinically and industrially relevant incurred reference materials to improve analysis of food allergens, milk, egg, almond, hazelnut and walnut

Gill Holcombe; Michael J Walker; Malvinder Singh; Kirstin Gray; Simon Cowen; Stephen L R Ellison; Adrian Rogers; Anuradha Balasundaram; Malcolm Burns; E N Clare Mills

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.137391

Clinically and industrially relevant incurred reference materials to improve analysis of food allergens, milk, egg, almond, hazelnut and walnut

Food Chem. 2024 Feb 15:434:137391. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.137391. Epub 2023 Sep 4.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ LGC Ltd, Queens Road, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 0LY, UK. Electronic address: Gill.Holcombe@lgcgroup.com.
² LGC Ltd, Queens Road, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 0LY, UK; Institute for Global Food Security, Queen's University, Belfast BT9 5DL, UK. Electronic address: michael.walker@qub.ac.uk.
³ LGC Ltd, Queens Road, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 0LY, UK.
⁴ Romer Labs UK Ltd., The Heath Business & Technical Park, Runcorn, Cheshire WA7 4QX, UK.
⁵ Division of Infection, Immunity and Respiratory Medicine, School of Biological Sciences, Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, The University of Manchester, 131 Princess Street, Manchester M1 7DN, UK.
⁶ Division of Infection, Immunity and Respiratory Medicine, School of Biological Sciences, Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, The University of Manchester, 131 Princess Street, Manchester M1 7DN, UK; School of Biosciences and Medicine, The University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH, UK.

PMID: 37703777
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.137391

Abstract

Measurement of food allergen protein concentrations against thresholds can improve allergen risk management and precautionary allergen labelling. Such measurement suffers well known problems which could be ameliorated by well characterised reference materials (RMs) providing meaningful information for risk assessors. We investigated the preparation and characterisation of the first consensus informed industrially and clinically relevant multi-allergen matrix RM kit for five priority allergens. It is a medium analytical difficulty processed food chocolate paste matrix (a) devoid of allergens, and (b) incurred with five allergens at the clinically relevant concentration of 10 mg kg^-1 expressed as protein. The allergen raw materials: hens' egg white powder, skimmed cows' milk powder, almond powder (full fat), hazelnut powder (partially defatted), and walnut powder (partially defatted), are also available as RMs. The preparation, gravimetric traceability to the SI, homogeneity, and stability were found to be fit-for-purpose and the RMs are now available to the analytical community.