Peanut Allergy Sufferer’s Good News

Peanut allergy threshold is very low with certain people and their reactions vary from one peanut sufferer to another. But, many food manufacturers are unsure about the presence of peanut in their food product.

Present practice of just to put a label on the food product that the product may contain traces of peanut, is a very unsure approach. The approach should be to determine how much peanut is present in a processed food. However, a test has been discovered in UK, by the Great British Food Research Agency, by which a manufacturer can find out even a trace of peanut presence in the food product.

As per Dr. Andrew Wadge, the Director of Food Safety Policy for the FSA, the Agency has a wide programme of research to protect the interest of consumers. He feels further research is needed to see whether the test can also detect other allergens. However, he hopes that all these research work will lead to the development of a process that food business will be able to utilize in their production process.

The test PCR detects any peanut DNA presence in food item. The test was developed by the scientist of Central Research Laboratory and was carried out on number of food items from store shelves around the country.

Further testing and research is planned , before PCR can be used commercially and facilitating shoppers and manufacturers to know with relative surety  whether  any food product contain even traces of peanut or not.