Allergen Analysis And Control In Plant Protein Beverage Process Plants

The global plant protein beverage has an average annual growth rate of 28% in the past five years because the new consumption trends related to nutrition and health,and it's the fastest growing sub-category in food and beverage industry.This kind of beverage usually select nuts and cereal etc.which is typical allergen material as raw material.On the other hand,food allergy is becoming more and more serious which caused by cereal,soy,peanuts and nuts etc.Most people have a food allergy,and very few people(about 3% of adults and 8% of infants and children)have a strong allergic reaction such as breathing difficulties and even shock.The food allergy related issues are very important in developed countries,and it has become main trade barrier,but it has just started in China.Normally,we use physical methods(such as thermal processing,gamma irradiation,ultrasonic treatment and high pressure treatment etc.)and biochemical methods(such as enzyme treatment etc.)to remove the allergen contamination,but due to that allergens is very stable to processing and difficult to remove,so the result is not ideal.Monitoring the whole process and removing allergen residues is the key to solve this problem.This paper summarized the following key control points in plant protein beverage and made a detailed allergen control plan according to the actual situation after investigating some plant protein factories,and it was also validated in two factories which implemented allergen control plan already.The summary is as below:1.Allergen hazard analysis and establishment of critical point control systemAllergy is resistance to processing,cross reaction,intermediate metabolites allergies and other characteristics,so it's difficult to manage if we only consider from production side,and need to start from raw materials,processing,transportation,storage,improve the product traceability system and emergency plan for the entire chain of safety management and establish the critical control points,then it comes with remarkable results too.Firstly,procurement and supply chain of raw materials and transportation have to create a complete set of critical control point system include supplier evaluation,assessment of raw materials,assessment of transportation and assessment of raw material storage etc.Secondly,the production and CIP have to schedule properly,and the people and logistic flow have to control strictly too,and reuse material also has to manage well.In addition,the operator training is also extremely important to make each staff involved in the production of allergen control and fully understand the process and importance.Thirdly,the finished product storage and transportation need to label clearly identification of allergen,and strict inspection means of transport,and allergen and non-allergen product shall be isolated storage and transportation.Finally,production traceability system and emergency plan can respond rightly to minimize influence of security incident which caused by the allergen product recall.It helps to protect consumer benefits and also minimize property loss of company.2.The establishment of allergen control planTwo typical factories were selected,and both of them run plant protein product(Hubei A factory and Anhui B factory).The paper starts from the preparatory work,people training,raw material supplying,process and equipment,cleaning procedure,product researching and developing,packaging and labeling and so on to establish a control plan of allergen cross-contamination.3.The verification of the allergen control planThe same kind of final products from two different factories were sampled.The Hubei A factory which is following conventional way without any allergen control plan was regarded as negative control,and the Anhui B factory which is following the suggested allergen control plan in this study was regarded as treatment group.The result indicated that the treatment group was obviously better with less allergen contamination than the negative control as it followed the allergen control plan,even the effectiveness was not 100% subjected to raw material contamination and plan implementation,etc.