Allergenicity risk assessment of GMOs and novel foods: An overview

The evaluation of adverse immune reactions to proteins (i.e., “allergenicity”) is one of the most overarching, important and difficult aspects of the safety assessment of foods. The protein allergenicity risk assessment strategy developed for crops obtained by established techniques of genetic modifications has been successfully applied for more than twenty years. Nowadays, such approach needs to be revisited to meet the challenges of innovations such as those from whole novel foods, alternative protein-based food additives and flavorings, or new genome editing techniques. Setting clear safety objectives to address new technologies and/or products are needed to ensure that allergenic risks are assessed in an appropriate, consistent and proportionate manner.