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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

#171

Post by paulddraper »

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…

> Rather than minimize cross-contamination, as they argue the law requires, many big food brands have opted to add sesame to their bread products, then simply declare it as an ingredient.

Right.

Bimbo has not been actually adding the allergen to the product. Presumably, they will start explicitly adding it, so the warning will be proper.

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

#172

Post by ajsnigrutin »

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…

Usually those are labeled as "may contain traces of....".

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

#173

Post by mensetmanusman »

akira2501 wrote: post #168
betaby wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Overregulation + Monopolization is the 1-2 punch in operation here. It's the only reason you'd even think to do something like this. "Fine. Now _everything_ has Sesame in it. What are you going to do? _Settle_ with us?"

How to fight economies of scale…

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

#174

Post by zeroonetwothree »

betaby wrote: post #158
kevinventullo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are many small bakeries that offer a variety of options. It seems silly to confidently assert this as you do.

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

#175

Post by mensetmanusman »

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…

If this happened where we added allergens to all foods, it might actually help in the long term.

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

#176

Post by shiroiushi »

nox101 wrote: post #160
mcmoor wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 F…

Not only that, but bread isn't a "need". Lots of cultures don't have bread as a significant portion of their diet.

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

#177

Post by zeroonetwothree »

dboreham wrote: post #170
brookst wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Disagree. There's a concept of people "growing out of allergies". I think it's at least plausible someone could eat product A without checking the label, then subsequently read the label and assume "well I must have grown out of that allergy" and hence proceed to eat product B.

Allergies depend on the dose so I don’t think most people would think like this.

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

#178

Post by MaximilianEmel »

mc32 wrote: post #154
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.

That's how it already apparently is, and this is supposed to mitigate that.

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

#179

Post by sadboi31 »

llamaimperative wrote: post #61
esd_g0d wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, a million times. My dream is "game theory" taught in schools, so we can all more productively discuss public policy, etc. The field of "mechanism design" may interest those to whom this speaks to. From Wiki ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design ): > Mechanism design is a branch of economics, social choice theory, and game theory that deals with designing games (or mechanisms) to implement a given soc…

Have you found any good books on mechanism design for laypeople? I picked one up (can’t remember the name) but it was quite textbooky and mathy, and I’d prefer to start with a more conceptual overview.

A little adjacent but The Systems Thinking Playbook: Exercises to stretch and Build Learning and Systems Thinking Capabilities might hit.

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

#180

Post by pfannkuchen »

NaOH wrote: post #148
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…

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 o…

Thank you for the mental image of a loaf of bread getting busted trying to smuggle a machine part out of the factory.
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