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Product Lifecycle Management
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Food & Beverage
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Blogs
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Trace One
Food allergies can be deadly—and they’re on the rise around the world. According to a report by the BBC, “More of the population has food allergies than ever before – and around the world, they are sending more and more people to hospital. One large-scale review of hospital admissions data found anaphylaxis cases on the rise in the US, Australia, and Europe, among other regions. Between 2013 and 2019, England saw a 72% rise in the number of hospital admissions for children caused by anaphylaxis.”
And it’s not just the rate that’s increased. The variety and scope of foods to which people are allergic has also broadened. As World Health Organization spokesperson Peter Ben Embarek frames it, “Initially, decades ago, it was only the classical ones: seafood, milk and nuts. That has expanded dramatically to a whole range of products now.”
Addressing allergen issues starts at manufacturing
One strategy food manufacturers are using to mitigate allergy risk is to establish manufacturing plants that only process certain ingredients. A plant may be a gluten free facility, for example.
Facilities that process allergen-containing foods must be hyper vigilant when it comes to cleaning. Some manufacturers separate contaminated zones from clean areas—which allows workers to clean effectively without having to worry about spreading contaminants to other parts of a building.
Tracking allergens—and allergen rules—is difficult without the right tools.
Given the rapidly evolving allergen landscape and the enormous stakes involved it’s critical for manufacturers to have the right tools and technologies in place to manage and reduce allergen risk.
Companies using outdated solutions or tools which are not purpose-built risk making costly and even deadly mistakes.
Choose a purpose-built software solution to manage allergen risk
A highly optimized solution such as Trace One Devex PLM allows modern manufacturers to see and understand the implications of various allergens immediately, spot problems as soon as they emerge, and validate claims within a workflow—on a dynamic basis.
Trace One Devex PLM can help product managers identify allergens at every level of development by tracking every constituent ingredient as they proceed through various phases of the formulation. For example, the complexity of tracking components of processed ingredients is mitigated by the platform’s workflow.
Trace One Devex PLM facilitates fast and easy searches that give visibility into processes, at any level of depth or detail desired.
As one food product manager stated it, “If we decide to introduce an ingredient at a plant, Trace One Devex PLM can help us support that decision, document it, provide traceability for an audit, and enforce it for us going forward.”
Interested in finding out how Trace One Devex PLM can help your company? Schedule a demo today.