RIDASCREEN®FAST Hazelnut

Description

Intended use:

RIDASCREEN®FAST Hazelnut is a sandwich enzyme immunoassay for the quantitative analysis of hazelnut (e.g. traces of hazelnut) in food such as cereals, bakery products, ice cream and chocolate.

General Information:

Hazelnut (Corylus avellana) is one of the most popular tree nuts worldwide. Hazelnuts are very common ingredients of chocolate products and are also consumed as snacks and in bakery products such as cookies. Hazelnut is also one of five foods, which are the most frequent cause of food allergies. In Central Europe, more than 90 % of hazelnut allergies are associated with an allergy to tree pollens. Consumption of a few milligrams of hazelnut can induce allergic reactions in sensitized individuals. Therefore, labelling of hazelnut containing products is very important and compulsory in the USA and the European Union as well as in many other countries. The main threat for sensitized individuals is contamination of hazelnut in food, which is intended to be hazelnutfree (e.g. hazelnut traces in chocolate which should not contain hazelnuts). Therefore, it is important to test foods which may have been contaminated during their production process for the presence of unintended traces of hazelnuts.

Besides being present as an ingredient, the allergen can be present as s a contamination in raw and cooked products. According to the regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011, hazelnut and products thereof must be declared on food labels. Similar regulations exist e.g. in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Benefits:

• Collaborative study (14 different laboratories) for hazelnut in dark chocolate resulted in recovery between 93.8 – 118.5 % (mean: 106.3 %). The ELISA has been validated for dark chocolate by the German BVL (§64 method LFGB).
• Specificity: no cross reactivities have been observed in a wide range of matrices (81).
• Sensitivity: one of the most sensitive ELISAs (0.17 – 0.22 mg / kg) on the market.