Regulatory and compliance activities to protect food-allergic consumers in Canada: research in support of standard setting and consumer protection

An overview is presented of the activities of Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in the area of food allergens. Since the 1990s, changes were made in the Food and Drug Regulations in order to better protect allergic consumers by imposing labeling requirements to clearly identify sources of priority food allergens in prepackaged foods. Policies of application as well as risk management strategies are discussed with some statistics on allergen-related food recalls in Canada for the years 1997--2001. Health Canada's allergen method development program is a pioneering research initiative that was developed in the early 1990s in support of the changing Canadian regulatory environment. The objectives and some of the accomplishments of this program are presented. The development of the Canadian Compendium of Allergen Methodologies under a Web-based application to compile data on evaluated allergen detection methods will provide further support to compliance activities nationally, as well as to the international analytical community in both government and the food industry. Some emerging techniques for the confirmation of results generated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays are also discussed.