GovWire

Webinar

This free webinar took place on 28 September 2022 at 15:00 BST (1.5 hours). You can watch the recording:

Analysis for substances causing food hypersensitivity webinar

During this webinar Dr Hazel Gowland will explain why food allergens are important, why and how allergen avoidance may fail and how those at risk can be protected.

Dr Michael Walker will then provide an overview of analysis and bioanalysis for substances causing food hypersensitivity, covering:

• An introduction to food hypersensitivity

• What allergens are, including food intolerance compounds

• Legislative background to labelling

• Sampling

• The main analytical techniques used

• The importance of validation and performance characteristics

• Confirmatory analysis when and how to use complementary techniques

• Reporting results of analysis

The presentations will be followed by a Q&A session, during which you can pose your questions to our experts.

This event is intended for individuals currently working within the food allergen testing arena, the food industry and those involved with the UK official control system.

This is the fourth webinar in the Webinar Series of the Joint Knowledge Transfer Framework for Food Standards and Food Safety Analysis, which is a cross-government project (funded by Defra, Food Standards Agency, Food Standards Scotland and BEIS via the Government Chemist programme) aimed at disseminating knowledge from government funded research to stakeholders to support UK laboratory capability and promote best practice in food safety and standards analysis.

Speakers

Hazel Gowland, Allergy Action UK

Dr Gowland is a food allergy advocate, expert patient/consumer, researcher, consultant and trainer who shaped the Anaphylaxis Campaign from its foundation in 1994. She lectures on Allergy, Human Nutrition and Public Analyst Masters programmes. Current studies include the quality of life and cost of living with food allergy, and on-going epidemiological work to understand and record severe and fatal reactions and the regulatory and forensic context of food allergy.

Michael Walker, Queens University, Belfast

Dr Walker is a leading expert in food safety and authenticity, and until 2020 was Head of the Office of the Government Chemist at LGC. He has published numerous peer reviewed papers, several book chapters and technical articles on food hypersensitivity and ran a knowledge network on the topic (2011-2015). He is the Co-Chair of the ILSI Europe Expert Group on allergen quantitative risk assessment.

The Q&A session will be chaired by Selvarani Elahi MBE, LGC

Selvarani Elahi is the Deputy Government Chemist at LGC and the Executive Director of the Food Authenticity Network. Selvarani has over25 years experience in the analysis of food and agriculture samples working across a variety of policy areas, with government departments and different stakeholder groups, to improve standards in measurement science. She worked with Defra, FSA & FSS to set-up the Joint Knowledge Transfer Framework for Food Standards and Food Safety Analysis in 2017.

Agenda

• Introduction (Selvarani Elahi)

• Why food allergens are important (Hazel Gowland)

• Testing for Food Allergens (Michael Walker)

• Q&A Session (Chairperson

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