7. Conclusion

Food allergies represent a major food safety issue.

Their recent increase is mainly due to changing lifestyles. Many of these allergies are avoidable, and awareness of the risks by all those involved in the food chain should eventually improve the situation.

National and European health safety agencies, as well as all the authorities, have taken the matter into consideration, with professionals following suit.

Allergen risk is now taken into account in the field.

One difficulty remains: we don't know the threshold for the presence of an allergen likely to trigger a reaction. Knowing such a threshold, at least for the greatest number of sensitive people, will enable us to develop analytical methods to ensure that the quantity of allergen present is indeed below this threshold.