Tech Tip | Food Allergen Testing Methods

Here at Neogen®, we frequently get questions from our customers regarding the most appropriate methodology to use when testing for food allergens in their particular facility. Both environmental testing and product testing can be used in these types of approaches.

Environmental testing is the more traditional approach that's been used by the industry for many years, particularly in a qualitative lateral flow format such as Neogen's Reveal® 3-D products. Environmental testing involves testing the entire process that a product goes through, from beginning to end. This could include swabbing equipment, food contact surfaces, storage areas, and in certain cases, screening rinse waters in a closed or continuous system.

In more recent years, product testing has become more popular as customers are now testing products and ingredients directly for the presence or absence of food allergens, down to a limit of detection.

There is no right or wrong approach when it comes to environmental or product testing. Both can be appropriate depending on your facility.

Neogen has the assets and technical expertise to be able to assist you onboarding either approach. We have both quantitative and qualitative assays to either screen or quantify low levels of allergenic residue in a wide variety of samples, both environmental and product based.

We also have a whole team of technical experts that are ready and willing to assist you in training on our assays both virtually and live, as well as product validations, where we take your samples in our ISO accredited labs and we run them to make sure they are fit for purpose on our assays.

If you have any questions on environmental versus product testing or any of Neogen’s food allergen solutions, please feel free to reach out to a Neogen representative.

Thank you.