Allergen quantitative risk assessment within food operations: Concepts towards development of practical guidance based on an ILSI Europe workshop

Quantitative risk assessment (QRA) for allergens exists in many different forms with requirements placed on the assessor depending question that needs to be answered. An electronic workshop held October 2020 and comprising representatives from a wide range of food allergy allergen stakeholder groups identified summary current best class guidance, gaps, potential improvements & harmonization QRA arising largely cross contact would very beneficial. The manuscript provides an introduction overview inputs potentially needed methods, when deemed feasible necessary. It also introduces European branch International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI Europe) Expert Group (EG), created attempt achieve consensus methodologies QRAs by business operators, their implementation. Areas focus include proactive assessments production under normal conditions, both upstream supply chain facilities, reactive as part incident response. As follow-up report workshop, insights into guidance being developed. This will itself followed more detailed published open access ILSI Europe report. • forms. Where is useful, availability required data favored. Work 1: ways obtain convey reliable information across chain. 2: assess cross-contact conditions. - 3: systematic harmonized approach applying ‘incidents’.