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FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

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Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#141

Post by rising-sky »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #122
lpolovets wrote: post #117

My understanding is this allergen over-labeling was inspired by the FDA in the first place. https://www.fastcompany.com/90830854/sesame-seed-allergen-fd... From the linked article (from Jan 2023): But sesame does differ in one distinct way from eggs, peanuts, shellfish, milk, and soy: The seeds are teeny tiny and hard to keep track of. This means they’re prone to “cross-contamination,” in food-allergy terms. If you o…

Eh, this seems like a pretty bullshit argument on the part of manufacturers though. My expectation for a food prep area is that I should be able to safely eat off of any surface. This level of cleanliness should eliminate any contaminants from the environment bigger than airborne dust and given how relatively cheap air filtration equipment is a case could be made there as well. In any case sesame seeds are a hell of…

Indeed and pretty disingenuous from the bakeries. Mislabelling as containing allergens when it does not can lead to a false sense of security or comfort in consumers. In that they may potentially consume an item and discover that it is labelled for the allergen, and subsequently assume that the lack of a reaction indicates tolerance. Potentially, leading them to consume accurately labelled products expecting the same non-reaction

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#142

Post by infecto »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #96
infecto wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was a clear and flagrant abuse of the "may contain traces" mechanism. The bakeries caused harm for consumers as a way to avoid the coats of doing business safely. My view is that the business should be able to decide who they want to service or not. According to recent US studies, 0.2% of the population have a noticeable allergy to sesame. Seems like bakeries don't want to invest money for such a small percentag…

[flagged]

Libertarians? Why do some people insist on placing labels on things. Just a tiresome action.

I am simply saying the regulation as its presented in the article seems confusing as heck. The manufacturers are indicating they don't care about this market so they are just listing it on the label because the facility is processing sesame. That does not like the right way but I got the impression they don't use the "may" language because its likely there is some trace of it in the product. If they just end up adding some to the ingredients it complies with letter of the law but not the spirit. IMO its confusing as the business what the right path forward is, my interpretation is that they don't care about people with sesame allergies and it probably makes economic sense for large scale facilities, they need to be given better guidance from the FDA other than "prevent cross contamination".

FARE lists sesame allergies as 0.7 million in the US, 2020 might be outdate information though.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#143

Post by infecto »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #122
lpolovets wrote: post #117

My understanding is this allergen over-labeling was inspired by the FDA in the first place. https://www.fastcompany.com/90830854/sesame-seed-allergen-fd... From the linked article (from Jan 2023): But sesame does differ in one distinct way from eggs, peanuts, shellfish, milk, and soy: The seeds are teeny tiny and hard to keep track of. This means they’re prone to “cross-contamination,” in food-allergy terms. If you o…

Eh, this seems like a pretty bullshit argument on the part of manufacturers though. My expectation for a food prep area is that I should be able to safely eat off of any surface. This level of cleanliness should eliminate any contaminants from the environment bigger than airborne dust and given how relatively cheap air filtration equipment is a case could be made there as well. In any case sesame seeds are a hell of…

I know its easy to blame the manufacturers but I don't believe they are entirely at fault here. Its not so much the size alone but that in these facilities they are not being cleaned after every run. Certainly the products that spoil are getting sanitize appropriately (eggs, dairy etc) but uncooked grains I suspect have a much larger time line for cleaning.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#145

Post by brookst »

rising-sky wrote: post #141
forgetfreeman wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, this seems like a pretty bullshit argument on the part of manufacturers though. My expectation for a food prep area is that I should be able to safely eat off of any surface. This level of cleanliness should eliminate any contaminants from the environment bigger than airborne dust and given how relatively cheap air filtration equipment is a case could be made there as well. In any case sesame seeds are a hell of…

Indeed and pretty disingenuous from the bakeries. Mislabelling as containing allergens when it does not can lead to a false sense of security or comfort in consumers. In that they may potentially consume an item and discover that it is labelled for the allergen, and subsequently assume that the lack of a reaction indicates tolerance. Potentially, leading them to consume accurately labelled products expecting the same…

If I'm understanding you correctly, the concern is that someone who has e.g. a peanut allergy will eat product A which is labeled as containing peanuts despite not having any, and then decide they must not be allergic so they can eat product B which is also labeled as containing peanuts but actually has them, and have a bad outcome?

This seems a stretch. If the person is eating food labeled as containing an allergen, do we really care whether it is product A or B that produces the bad outcome?

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#146

Post by bradleyjg »

utensil4778 wrote: post #29
Molitor5901 wrote: post #15

This seems like splitting hairs on the part of the FDA. FDA officials acknowledged Tuesday that statements that a product “may contain” certain allergens “could be considered truthful and not misleading.” Bimbo officials have until July 8 to identify steps taken to remedy the issue — or to explain why the labeling doesn't violate FDA standards. So a baker.. who adds (insert allergy ingredient here), in minute quantit…

This is about sesame. Last year or so, the FDA changed the rules about sesame as an allergen. Some bakeries then decided to just slap "may contain traces of sesame" on everything so they didn't have to pay the cost of actually ensuring there's no cross-contamination. This has significantly harmed consumers who are actually allergic to sesame. Now there's effectively no way to know if a baked product will actually con…

This has significantly harmed consumers who are actually allergic to sesame.

Their lobbying group caused the problem in the first place by pushing congress to pass unreasonably expensive cross contamination rules.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#147

Post by shiroiushi »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #128
starttoaster wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's closer to: FDA orders bakers to list allergens. There are stiff penalties if you are allergenic but don't list the allergen. So? Bakers look at their production processes and determine there's a chance that enough allergens get into the product due to cross contamination to list it on the label, just in case. FDA doesn't like it. They expect the bakers to fix their cross-contamination issues at great expense to…

The only way to fix cross-contamination issues is to have a different production facility for every possible combination of allergens. Which is insane. I worked in a factory that packaged food, if one product contained an allergen, there was no way you could guarantee that a tiny amount of that allergen wouldn't get into some amount of the next product on that production line. No way. Not any possible way. You can cl…

It could be done, but you'd have to treat bread production like silicon wafer production. Bread would become very, very expensive.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#148

Post by NaOH »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #122
lpolovets wrote: post #117

My understanding is this allergen over-labeling was inspired by the FDA in the first place. https://www.fastcompany.com/90830854/sesame-seed-allergen-fd... From the linked article (from Jan 2023): But sesame does differ in one distinct way from eggs, peanuts, shellfish, milk, and soy: The seeds are teeny tiny and hard to keep track of. This means they’re prone to “cross-contamination,” in food-allergy terms. If you o…

Eh, this seems like a pretty bullshit argument on the part of manufacturers though. My expectation for a food prep area is that I should be able to safely eat off of any surface. This level of cleanliness should eliminate any contaminants from the environment bigger than airborne dust and given how relatively cheap air filtration equipment is a case could be made there as well. In any case sesame seeds are a hell of…

There aren’t food prep areas when it comes to manufacturing at this scale. There are silos, storage tanks, essentially duct work to transport ingredients from bulk storage to production, and large-scale machinery which is designed to minimize exposure to the environment and people while in use. That’s putting aside the equipment and facilities used to acquire ingredients or store products after production.

Yes, all of this equipment is also designed to be cleaned and sanitized, but these are large surface areas covering large distances. And we’re talking about one little sesame seed which can’t be easily detected if it somehow makes its way into a product, unlike, say, the metal detectors all finished goods pass through to ensure no metal object found its way into something.

Spending time in facilities like Bimbo operates will disavow someone of the idea that the work a company like that does is akin to what happens in restaurants or catering facilities. These are factories where product assembly happens to involve edible parts.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#149

Post by brookst »

marshray wrote: post #127
hollerith wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now there's effectively no way to know if a baked product will actually contain sesame You are catastrophizing. It remains the case that any baked product that doesn't have "may contain traces of sesame" on the label must by law be free of traces of sesame. And if no producer chooses to produce such a product, then it is because the number of people who want it is quite small (or the costs of complying with regulati…

No one wins by some percentage of the population having to bake their own bread. If these facilities cannot keep unwanted visible particulates like sesame out of their products, how can they keep dirt and bacteria out? This regulation is not only good for people allergic to sesame, it's a brown M&M test. I see value in it.

> how can they keep dirt and bacteria out?

They can't. It's statistically impossible. Even operating theaters and clean rooms can't keep every trace bit of dirt or bacteria out. All anyone tries to do is reduce the incidence to below a meaningful threshold.

If the requirement is: either eliminate every last molecule of every offending substance, or use a label that the offending substance may appear in trace amounts... well, everyone is going to opt for the label.

Re: FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

#150

Post by kian »

OJFord wrote: post #121
ASalazarMX wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Mexican, I'm still salty with Bimbo because I went to Spain, and they sold there better, bigger Bimbo-brand sliced bread than here, including varieties without crust. It takes guts to keep the brand name in English-speaking contries, though. > The name was formed as the combination of the Disney Bambi and Dumbo films names, which were the favourite movies of Marinela, Lorenzo Servitje's daughter. Later, the foun…

> in China the word for bread (面包, miànbāo) is similar to ['Bimbo'] Err.. ish? About as similar as 'Hacker News' and 'cake her knees', anyway?

They are slant rhymes of one another. B and M are phonetically nearby, as are ia and ih and ao and ou. In no way like hacker news and cake her knees -- but more like hacker news and hagger moos ;)
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