From Hazard to Risk - Assessing the Risk

Regulatory thresholds for allergenic foods have not yet been developed. This means that public and industrial risk managers do not have regulatory thresholds to decide if a content or level of contamination is acceptable or not. For a long time, data have been inadequate to define safe thresholds for food allergens. More and more challenge data from food allergic patients are now available, and this opens the possibility to perform more advanced food allergy safety and risk assessments. These can be used to inform risk management decisions and ultimately to form the basis for regulatory thresholds. In the chapter we describe three different approaches for safety/risk assessment based on no/low observed adverse effect level, benchmark dose, or probabilistic modeling. These methods are illustrated by examples from real life and the possibilities and limitations are discussed.