Food Technology

George M Siragakis is a Food Chemist and MSc Director of FA Food Allergens Lab Ltd. He has thirty two years of experience on food testing. He is the Reviewer of Journal of American Oils Chemistry Society. He is also a Member of WG12 CEN for Food Allergen Testing and CEN/TC 275/WG 6/TAG 3. She is the President of Organizing Committee of Greek National Biotechnology and Food Technology Congress. He is also a Member of Euro Lipid Forum, World Science Poultry Association. He has 45 publications. He has given presentations in AOAC, AOCS, WSPA Mediterranean Poultry Congresses. He has extensive food quality control and food laboratory analysis carrier (since 1987 in several positions as Quality Control Manager.

The increasing of allergic reactions in part of the population often causes unpleasant clinical symptoms to sufferers, reaching even death. Considering that even infinitesimal amounts of these allergens can cause anaphylactic shock the European Union set Reg 1169/2011, which requires all packaged foodstuffs to include in their ingredients label all food allergens (cereals, eggs, fish and seafood, milk, peanuts and nuts, soy, sesame seeds, mustard, SO2, celery, lupine and molluscs) even in traces. Greek Food Safety Authority (EFET) also announced a lot of recalls for allergen contaminated foods. Greek traditional products based on wheat and other cereals are tested. Sesame, mustard, lupine and soy were the allergens that ore found in a great percentage of them. Fish, mollusks and celery was not found in none of them. The techniques used were RT-PCR for celery and immunoassay for all the other allergens and with these we can detect or identify one allergen at a time.The products with the existence of many allergens were wheat flour, halvas, tahini and dakos. For the detection of multiple allergens with one injection, LC-MS/MS technique was used. The method was compared to official immunochemical and molecular methods (ELISA and Real-Time PCR) that are capable of detecting the presence of a single type of allergen with satisfactory results for the parameters. This method is capable of screening and identifying egg white, skim milk, peanut, soy, mustard and lupine at a detection limit of 10 ppm in incurred bread bakery products. It was further tested for the quantitative analysis of milk, peanut, and lupine, which are incurred or spiked into selected food matrixes as defined in AOAC International Standard Method Performance Requirement (SMPR®) 2016.002. The method demonstrated an excellent sensitivity with a method quantitative limit of 3 ppm for whole egg and 10 ppm for the remaining three allergen commodities. It also demonstrated good recovery (80-109%) and repeatability (RSDr <20%), with an analytical range of 10-1000 ppm for each allergen commodity and was able to meet the minimum performance requirements of the SMPR.