Abstract
Accidental milk cross-contamination is one of the most common causes for costly food recalls. Yet, quantifying trace-levels of allergen is time-consuming and current methods are not adapted for routine analyses making quality control for trace-level allergen content impractical. This perpetuates voluntary “may-contain” statements that are unhelpful for people suffering from food allergies. Here, we developed a rapid LC-MS method enabling milk allergen quantification by comparing all tryptic-peptides of major milk allergens. The bovine-specific αS-2 casein peptide and allergen-epitope NAVPITPTLNR provided excellent performance in sensitivity (LOD 1 mg.kg − 1; LOQ 2 mg.kg − 1) across various dairy products, good recovery rates in baked croissants (77 % with a 10 % inter-day RSD) and a linear range of 2 – 2,000 mg.kg − 1. The method can be used for routine determination of trace-contamination with bovine milk allergen and the adulteration of high-value caprine dairy products with lower-value bovine milk products, protecting consumer trust and the growing population suffering from food allergies.
RAS ID
57901
Document Type
Journal Article
Volume
417
Funding Information
Research Plus CERC postdoctoral fellowship by CSIRO, Australia
School
School of Science
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Publisher
Elsevier
Comments
Nelis, J. L., Dawson, A. L., Bose, U., Anderson, A., Colgrave, M. L., & Broadbent, J. A. (2023). Safe food through better labelling: A robust method for the rapid determination of caprine and bovine milk allergens. Food Chemistry, 417, Article 135885.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.135885