Environmental Monitoring for Food Allergens

Food allergies are on the rise. Recent studies show they affect an estimated 10% of the U.S. population, including up to 8% of infants and young children (Gupta et al., Pediatrics, 2018), with reactions ranging from severe to life-threatening. As cases continue to rise, facilities that work with allergen-containing products will find it more important than ever to strengthen their Environmental Monitoring Program (EMP) to help prevent accidental exposure.

Why Allergen Monitoring Matters

Undeclared allergens are still among the leading causes of food recalls in the United States. Without a strong EMP, facilities that work with allergenic-containing products may risk costly recalls, potential safety issues, and losing customer trust.

Environmental monitoring helps reduce these risks by validating and verifying that your cleaning protocols work, and your production environment stays under control. If your facility switches between allergen-containing and allergen-free product lines, strong monitoring is essential. For example, if you produce chocolate bars with peanuts followed by a peanut-free batch, your EMP must validate the removal of peanut proteins to protect customers and prevent recalls due to undeclared allergens.

An effective allergen EMP also strengthens your facility’s Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) plan and aligns with the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) and Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requires manufacturers in the United States and those that export food to the United States to include allergen controls in their food safety plan. The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) also requires allergen controls to be identified and monitored.

Integrating allergen monitoring into a robust EMP reinforces compliance, verifies sanitation steps, and protects your customers. To build an effective plan, you need to understand where allergens may enter your facility, and the specific risks involved. Recognizing these vulnerabilities allows you to establish proactive control measures that help keep your products safe.

Understanding Allergen Risks in Your Facility

Identifying sources of allergen contamination begins with understanding your products and how processing impacts them within your facility. Some allergens such as milk, eggs, peanuts, and other raw ingredients pose obvious risks. However, your food processing can introduce less obvious or entirely new risks that your team needs to identify and control. For example, baking, fermentation, and processes that break protein into small peptides can make allergenic ingredients undetectable. In other cases, allergenic ingredients are intentionally modified through processing yet still retain their allergenic potential. These processing quirks complicate allergen tracking and control.

Adding to the challenge, facilities must often navigate mislabeled sourced products or varying regulatory requirements, such as different threshold limits—the minimum amount of an allergen that can trigger a reaction in sensitive individuals.

These variables emphasize the need for proactive monitoring and a strong understanding of your facility’s specific risks, starting with how you process, handle, and source each product. By recognizing your facility’s specific quirks and challenges and accounting for them in the EMP, your food safety team can gain better allergen control within your facility.

Understanding your facility’s unique risks sets the stage for effective allergen control. The next step is selecting targeted sampling strategies that match your facility’s specific needs.

How to Get Started: Sampling and Frequency

To optimize your sampling efforts, prioritize high-risk areas such as food-contact surfaces in Zones 1 and 2. Next, consider your facility’s production flow, ingredient use, and historical data to refine your sampling strategy. Elements like production schedules, changeovers, allergen types, and past results should inform your sampling frequency.

Selecting the right sampling methods, zones, and frequency while staying consistent helps you build historical data, track patterns, and spot issues early. But sampling is just the first step. The real value comes when you dig into the results, spot potential risks, and make adjustments to keep your facility protected.

Learn More About Neogen Allergen Tests

What’s Next: Trends and Corrective Action

Once your monitoring program is in place, you can start collecting and documenting results consistently. Tracking both positive and negative findings over time helps you differentiate one-off incidents from ongoing issues, making it easier to catch sanitation, training, or equipment issues. When positive results come up, reclean and retest right away. For higher-risk findings, you may decide to hold production until follow-up testing confirms that the line is clear. In some cases, you may increase monitoring or schedule deep cleaning for medium-risk areas, while prioritizing low-risk areas for future maintenance.

If repeated positives emerge, dig deeper to understand the root cause. Sometimes, issues like equipment design flaws, missed cleaning schedules, or gaps in hygiene practices can cause these problems. When that happens, consider long-term fixes like adjusting how often you clean, revalidating your procedures, or even upgrading equipment to keep your allergen control strategy strong. Documenting each step ensures traceability and helps your facility comply with FSMA and GFSI requirements.

By identifying trends and addressing issues quickly, you help keep your facility safe and compliant. Now, it’s your turn to put that strategy into action with a proactive allergen monitoring plan.

It’s Time to Act