Seven at once

By Dr. Sandra Kerbach, Eurofins Analytik GmbH, Labor Wiertz-Eggert-Jörissen, Germany

Food allergens are of major concern for consumers and the food industry. Up to 5% of the population is affected by food allergies. For people at risk, even very low concentrations of the allergenic food can lead to severe allergic reactions. Eurofins has offered a wide range of allergen testing methods and experience in analysis and customer service for many years. Now, Eurofins Wiertz-Eggert-Jörissen has developed a multi-screening method for simultaneous detection of seven allergens using the advanced technique of mass spectrometry:

• Milk
• Egg
• Soya
• Peanut
• Hazelnut
• Walnut
• Almond

These foodstuffs have been reported as some of the most common food allergens and must be declared if present in the food in accordance with the allergen labelling legislations in most countries, e.g. USA, Europe, and Australia.

The new method has been recently developed by scientists of Eurofins¹. As an example, the lowest detectable allergen concentration found in real food commodities, such as bakery products or bread mixes, can be as low as 10 mg/kg for milk proteins. The range of food matrices to which it can be applied will be continuously expanded in response to customers’ requirements.

This method provides the advantage of detecting multiple allergens in the same test with high reliability, alleviating the need for costly individual analyses of the same sample for individual allergens.

Unlike any commonly used technique this method directly detects allergenic protein compounds with high sensitivity and specificity. With the Eurofins qualitative multi screening offer based on mass spectrometry the need for riskbased analysis requests for individual allergens is a time of the past.

¹ Heick, Fischer, Popping, J Chromatogr A (2011), 1218 (2011), pp.938-943

Contact: sandrakerbach@eurofins.de