Sample size optimisation when designing sampling plan for risk assessment relating to adventitious presence of allergens in food

Background Despite the avoidance of allergen-containing products by allergic individuals, a risk of allergic reaction to food allergen still remains. These contaminations may result from the shared use of processing equipment in the food industry, and are not always identified. It is therefore important to select a representative food sample to analyse food contamination and to further assess risk for persons who have an allergy to specific food. The optimal sample size determination is one of the most recurrent problems when designing a sampling plan in every experiment. Difficulties are especially observed when the studied population may be divided into several groups. That is the case when analysing adventitious contamination of food product consumed by allergic population. Indeed, over 150 different foods have been reported to cause food-allergic reactions (Hefle, Nordlee et al. 1996), and some foods are found more involved in allergic reactions than others. This work was a part of the project MIRABEL which aims to set an integrated and operational framework for the allergic risk analysis, in order to improve quality of life of allergic sufferers.