Growing Need for Food Allergen Training

The most successful training programs are those that allow users to practice the learning. Have the sanitation team practice swabbing, and show them what happens when a detergent is not applied correctly. Develop different traffic pattern scenarios, and ask your processing team to identify cross-con­tamination points. Challenge your group to identify potential allergens in incoming product spec sheets. And, as with the previous awareness training, make it personal: This is their job, these are their responsibilities, here is why it is important to do it right, and here is the place to practice.

Central Command: Training for Senior Staff and the Allergen Team

This final level of training supports the backbone of your allergen program. The allergen team’s job is to take an inclusive view of your complete operation, to determine what could go wrong, and to put procedures in place that mitigate such circumstances. If we return to our story of Alice and her box of cereal, an effective allergen program would have anticipated that the end user might fail to notice the changed formulation. The company would have addressed that risk with labeling and packaging changes, looking beyond legislative requirements to protect both their customers and their brand.

In many companies, the allergen team and the food safety team are the same. At times, the “team” can be a group of one. Whatever the make-up, a primary focus during training is risk assessment, because it is through risk assessment that potential dangers are identified, classified, prioritized, and addressed. Risk assessment is also a key requirement of most GFSI standards.

An effective approach is to build the training program around the four main steps to risk assessment:

1. Hazard identification: What are we worried about?
2. Hazard characterization: How bad is it?
3. Exposure assessment: How much are people likely to get?
4. Risk characterization: What is the severity and likelihood?

Let your team work through exercises at each step until they are comfortable with the process. It is a skill set that they will be able to use not only when developing their allergen prevention program but also in many other areas of food safety. It will be worth the investment to ensure that the training is well designed and delivered and that your team fully internalizes the lessons.

A Plan for the Future

Training is an integral part of the management program. Remember that the bulk of all allergen-related recalls occur due to human error or ignorance. A BBQ meat product is recalled because the Worcestershire sauce it contains has anchovies in its formulation. A sushi company fails an audit because the teriyaki sauce that it uses contains soy and wheat, and no allergen prevention program was in place. A processor must recall a day’s worth of production because the right product was put in the wrong bottle. All employees, from the receiver to the packager, from the sanitation crew to the CEO, must be aware of the danger of allergens and of their own roles in ensuring a robust prevention program. Your brand, your business, and your reputation require it.

Jennifer McCreary is manager of customized training and Marie Lefaive is manager of program development at Guelph Food Technology Centre. They can be reached at [email protected] or online at www.gftc.ca.