New Guideline and Outline for Detection of Allergy Inducing Substances Contained in Food

Abstract

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare revised the detection method for foods containing allergy inducing substances in June of 2006. Since then, the mandatory display of certain allergy inducing substances including egg, milk, wheat, peanut and buckwheat was started. In this revision, the detection kits for allergy inducing substances were not specified, because the detection method was described as a guideline. In this report, the author described the outline of the new revision mentioning detection for the allergy inducing substances and the profiles of their standard materials. Moreover, the other 20 allergy inducing substances including kiwi fruit, crab, prawn (including shrimp), soybean, and walnut were encouraged to display upon label. The detection method for these substances has been under development.