The estate has been in dispute since shortly after Mrs. Othmer's death in April. Her niece contested whether Mrs. Othmer was of sound mind in 1988 when the will was drawn. A recently commercialized test developed by University of Nebraska researchers gives the food industry a new tool for protecting consumers allergic to peanuts. Peanut allergies are among the most common and most serious, said Steve Taylor, head of the university's Department of Food Science and Technology and co-director of the team that developed the test. Neogen Corp. of Lansing, Mich., will begin offering the Nebraska-developed test for sale to food processors this month, said Shada Biabiani, Neogen's manager of corporate communications.
Food processors can use the new test to detect minute traces of peanut in processed foods.
Cross-contamination occurs when allergenic food residue gets into another food processed on shared equipment, Taylor said. Processing foods on the same equipment is common and economically necessary, he said. Although processors clean equipment to avoid cross-contamination in the product and on the equipment, the peanut test is the first to give food companies a highly sensitive and reliable way to tell whether they've eliminated any trace of a peanut from the product or the shared equipment, Taylor said. The test is the fastest and most accurate peanut allergy test available for processed food, said Sue Hefle, a food toxicologist and co-director of the food allergy research team. The test will reduce chances that a person with food allergies will have an allergic reaction to peanuts from processed food, Taylor said.