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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

#151

Post by ryandrake »

derbOac wrote: post #94
starttoaster wrote: post #36

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. In the exact same way that every product ever invented may cause cancer in California, I assume? This is a problem with the FDA, not the companies. Give a dog a long leash, they're going to use the slack.

This was on my mind a lot when reading the article. I'm not sure how I feel about this all. The problem with the cancer-causing substance labels is some companies are saying their products contain cancer-causing substances when they clearly do not. At this point the label almost doesn't mean anything anymore because you can't tell if they're just putting it on there to prevent lawsuits, or because it actually does. S…

The problem is that naive lawmakers/voters believed that forcing companies to say “may cause cancer” or “may contain allergens” would be enough to cause customers to flee or enough to shame the companies into changing their products, but in reality, companies feel no shame and just happily add whatever labels they need to and continue to sell their shit.

Forcing disclosure doesn’t stop companies from doing bad things they have to disclose.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #136
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…

Hmm I wonder how good the us legal system is if a person insists they fell ill eating a product without a warning label and it goes to a jury trial? There will undoubtedly be a focus on ‘whether you can be 100% sure there was no sesame dust in the air’. Without a perfect vacuum clean room (that doesn’t really exist) you can’t be. As in even if you’re really fucking clean your probably losing the case in the American…

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by seewhydee »

ganzuul wrote: post #12

Doing the right thing would be a lot cheaper in the long run because a lot of people have mental problems from diet issues. Subsidies for common allergens that become cheap filler is another part of the epidemic.

Reducing the levels of allergens in food very likely has the side effect of promoting food allergies in children, due to lack of exposure during development. That's a strong negative consequence.

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

#154

Post by mc32 »

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…

This feels like it’s going the way of prop 65. To be on the safe side, everything gets the label, thus making the label pointless -it no longer helps differentiating things.

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

#155

Post by ryandrake »

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.

> If these facilities cannot keep unwanted visible particulates like sesame out of their products, how can they keep dirt and bacteria out?

They seemingly cant. There is a federally allowable amount of rat droppings allowed in food and it is non-zero!

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

#156

Post by kevinventullo »

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…

Doesn’t this open up the market for a newcomer to make verified sesame-free bread?

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

#157

Post by amanaplanacanal »

rdtsc wrote: post #27

So I don't get it why the bakeries didn't go for the "may contain" wording to start with. I guess one was the first to use "does contain" and then purposefully added sesame, everyone else thought that was particularly "clever" and copied it?

I believe the FDAs position is that the “may contain” wording was not legally sufficient. The product has to either contain the allergen, or not contain the allergen, and be labeled appropriately. Which is what led to bakeries adding sesame to everything to begin with.

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

#158

Post by betaby »

kevinventullo wrote: post #156
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…

Doesn’t this open up the market for a newcomer to make verified sesame-free bread?

No. That market is too small to target. Overregulation is affecting consumer choices.

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

#159

Post by altairprime »

jasinjames wrote: post #80
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…

The number might be 0.2% for just sesame, but roughly 10% of Americans have some form of allergy[0]. I'm guessing the reasoning here is to attempt to prevent "allergen creep", where the endgame would be major manufacturers throwing their hands up and listing most products as possibly containing many allergens (or, as in this case, intentionally introducing unnecessary ingredients). If this were to happen, we would ex…

This can’t be resolved by the FDA; the systemic issue is that industrial baking is permitted to operate facilities at monopoly scale. Breaking up the Bakery Belles would absolutely lead to the return of distinctions between different facilities that enabled sesame-free production to exist in the first place.

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

#160

Post by nox101 »

mcmoor wrote: post #137
nox101 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, if all the big companies only make things with allergens, then a market appears for allergen free products that some company will see an opportunity and fill.

In lots of disability cases, share of people affected is very very small it's not profitable to cover them. Otherwise the companies would already fight to capture this market. This is why lots of disability measures are (or campaigned to be) enforced by government. But now we're out of realm of free market and on to production quota, and that comes with its own consequences.

Of course the market is small. Not sure what your point is.

My point is it's not profitable for a large company like Bimbo to target that small segment. A smaller company, not trying to compete with Bimbo, can target that segment knowing Bimbo and other large companies are going to stay out of it. I don't understand why you don't see that as a solution. That kind of thing exists all over. Half the products at Whole Foods or maybe Erewhon are from small indie companies catering to small markets of people that want those things. It's arguably no different than a market that carries foods that aren't found at big chains like a market that has product from India or Russia or China.

If the market is too small then either those that need that need their special foods either have to pay $$$$ until there is a market or make them themselves. That seems normal to me. It's not other people's responsibility to provide for your needs.

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