Factory working performing hygiene training demonstration on equipment

The importance of allergen training in food and drink manufacture

6 November 2025 | Wendy Duncan, Safety, Quality and Allergens Manager

To protect consumers with food allergies, your brand reputation and your bottom line, effective food allergen management is essential.

When it comes to developing an effective food allergen management system, some key considerations for this should include, but are not limited to equipment, segregation, cleaning and training. Here we focus on training.

Just as with all areas of food safety, we must ensure that well-trained, well-intentioned people are working directly on activities relating to managing food allergens.

Within any food processing environment, personnel and their protective clothing can unintentionally act as allergen cross-contact vectors. So, it is essential that all personnel are well-trained in, and adhere to, best practice processes and procedures.

Any training should also facilitate awareness and competence in taking active steps to avoid food allergen cross-contact, and should cover other aspects of allergen management (for example, ensuring that correct labels are applied to every product).

Key training areas include – food allergen control, food allergen cleaning validation, and food allergen communication and labelling.

Food allergen control

Food safety professionals need to understand the principles and strategies of assessing and controlling food allergen risks, and how these relate to the development of food safety management systems within organisations and their suppliers.

The assessment and control of food allergen risks throughout the food chain have become a requirement of many standards, and are needed to protect consumers and prevent product recall or withdrawal.

Check out our training course on food allergen control.

Food allergen cleaning validation and analysis

Cleaning to remove allergens needs to be effective and repeatable, and its effectiveness at removing relevant allergens must be validated and verified.

Individuals involved in cleaning validations need to understand the scientific principles and techniques underpinning the validation and verification of allergen cleaning as a control within food allergen management systems. This is particularly important for those involved in the design, implementation, review and audit of food allergen cleaning validations, as well as those responsible for analysis or for liaising with the laboratories carrying out their testing.

When selecting a food allergen test, you need to understand what you are testing for, why that specific test is being done, and on what type of sample. With so many different food allergen tests available, it can be daunting to select the most appropriate option. What’s more, inherent limitations of the methodology can make it more challenging.

The right training can give you the necessary insight into key analytical methods within allergen testing, practical insight into the consideration of data, and knowledge of how best food businesses can work in partnership with laboratories to inform allergen control practices and protect consumers.

Check out our training course on food allergen cleaning validation and analysis.

Food allergen communication and labelling

When dealing with food allergen communication and labelling, it is essential to have understanding of relevant legislation, as well as awareness of best practice guidance.

For EU harmonised and UK legal requirements on provision of allergen information, some key areas include: allergen labelling of prepacked food; requirements for prepacked for direct sale products (Natasha’s law); communication of allergen information for food sold loose (e.g. in catering establishments or delicatessens).

Other areas for awareness include free-from allergen foods and precautionary allergen labelling (PAL), and quantitative risk assessment (i.e. the use of ‘thresholds’ as part of the decision whether to apply PAL).

Check out our training course on food allergen communication and labelling.

Our one-day bespoke allergen training course

Tailored to your business, products and processes, our one-day allergen training course covers:

Introduction to food hypersensitivity and food allergy in particular.
Food allergen communication to consumers:
- Relevant allergen legislation;
- Allergen labelling requirements;
- Precautionary allergen information to support risk communication (unintentional allergens).
Food allergen hazards – assessing and managing risk:
- Challenges presented by food allergens, implications for food safety, evaluation of the nature of the hazard and the risk presented by food allergens;
- Supplier risk assessment, ingredient supply chain (including adventitious contamination), document review;
- Standards and best practice.
Food allergy and food safety management systems:
- The role of allergen management, pre-requisite programmes, HACCP and protecting the food allergic consumer;
- Practices including cleaning, segregation, etc.
Food allergen management through cleaning:
- Overview of the allergen cleaning validation principles;
- Validation, verification and sampling;
- Consideration of data.
Food allergen testing methods:
- Overview of the analytical laboratory and analytical methods;
- Reports/certificates and results interpretation.
Practical exercises and case studies for each section.

Choose Campden BRI for food allergen training and consultancy

Managing food allergens and other substances that can cause food hypersensitivity can be challenging, but we are here to help.

Our one-day, bespoke allergen training course is an excellent option to provide comprehensive, remote training for up to 12 participants – covering food allergen communication to consumers, assessing and managing allergen risk, food safety management systems, cleaning to remove allergens, and allergen testing methods.

We also provide tutor-led, specific training courses on key aspects of food allergen management, including:

Food allergen control (including key principles and strategies of assessing and controlling food allergen risks and how they relate to the development of food safety management systems).
Food allergen cleaning validation and analysis (including interpretation of results and handling unexpected results).
Food allergen communication and labelling (including an introduction to quantitative risk assessment for deciding whether to apply precautionary allergen labelling).

The combination of our courses on food allergen control and communication/labelling enable you to take the RSPH Level 2 Award in Identifying and Controlling Food Allergy Risks.

We have over 100 years of expertise and are well-equipped to support food and drink businesses in all areas of food allergen management. Our experience extends beyond food hypersensitivity and encompasses a holistic understanding of global food safety, quality and regulatory requirements.

Alongside training, we provide a comprehensive, holistic range of services to support your food allergen management needs, including; food safety management systems, gap analysis, allergen risk mapping, hygienic design, practical support with cleaning validation, allergen testing, cross-contact precaution strategies, quantitative risk assessment, and labelling and legislation.