Food Industry Focused on Allergen-Free Ingredients

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Consumer preferences and trends can be volatile and hard to keep up with, but they absolutely impact the future of the agricultural industry. Healthy Food Ingredients is a company that supplies specialty market grains, pulses, and oil seeds. Chief sustainability officer Chris Wiegert says allergen-free products have been in high demand.

Wiegert… “We're really segregated by allergen. I mean, really that's the way the food industry has kind of gone in the last 10 years or so is really focused on those allergens. So depending on your customer base and what they're after, you know, the gluten-free market obviously drove some of that 6, 7, 8 years ago, where we saw that market really exploding. So we started separating our facilities by allergen.”

This includes gluten-free and products free of allergens that have to be traced and segregated clear back to the farm level.

Wiegert… “It starts at the farm, believe it or not with combine clean-outs equipment, clean out semi clean outs with the farm, bin clean outs with the farm. You know, just ensuring that farm equipment is clean at harvest time. It starts all the way there. And then it goes all the way through the chain with trucking and finished goods and incoming inspections, and last three loads on that truck.”

More information can be found on the Growing Pulse Crops podcast, which can be found on any podcast platform.