Allergen technology recognised at AIFST awards

Technology that reviews the allergen status of all ingredients in a product has been named the winner of the Food Industry Innovation Award at the 49th Annual Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology (AIFST) Convention.

The Allergen Bureau received the award for its VITAL Online platform, a web-based calculator that gives the global food industry a standardised allergen risk assessment tool that both incorporates new allergen science as it comes to hand and provides secure intellectual property data storage for manufacturers.

The VITAL program was developed by the Allergen Bureau as an initiative of the Australian Food and Grocery Council Allergen Forum and has been successfully commercialised through a subscription access service.

The Jack Kefford Award for Best Paper, the other major prize awarded at the convention, was presented to Divya Eratte of Federation University Australia’s Department of Food and Nutritional Science School of Applied and Biomedical Science.

Eratte’s 2015 paper ‘Co-encapsulation and characterisation of omega-3 fatty acids and probiotic bacteria in whey protein isolate-gum Arabic complex coacervates’ was published in the Journal of Functional Foods and documents the first attempt to develop a single microcapsule capable of delivering omega-3 fatty acids and probiotic bacteria together in one capsule.

The microcapsules are expected to have wider applications throughout the nutraceutical and functional food industry.

The AIFST Convention was co-located with FoodTech, a major trade event for Queensland food manufacturers.