Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 605 posts

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

#281

Post by itronitron »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #172
rising-sky wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....".

Yeah, and that is just as bad as "contains... " for people that have severe allergies.

The trend for most companies is just to put "may contain traces... " or "manufactured in a facility that also processes... " which will prevent me from buying from those manufacturers.

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

#282

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

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?"

Too far the other way will likely lead to a pseudo ban on Sesame seeds. It just wouldn't be worth the risk. Or the cost of it will get pushed on the 99.999% who won't die from a single Sesame seed.

I know there's a lot of things that work like this (handicap ramps for instance) but if you don't draw a line somewhere it does get overly expensive.

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

#284

Post by ehnto »

john_the_writer wrote: post #267
jjallen wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s over regulation to everyone who doesn’t have sesame allergies. It’s lifesaving to those that do. Somehow bakeries in Switzerland are doing just fine with sesame being a declared allergen and keeping them separate but American ones just can’t be bothered to handle a life threatening ingredient thoroughly carefully.

It's a scale difference. If you're making bread product for a million people you have a massive factory.. And nuts be there

If the regulations had teeth and they weren't allowed to cross contaminate at all, they would build a process that achieves that. Instead they get to put a few labels on there and just accept that they'll lose some customers who are allergic, save some money not building a new process.

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

#285

Post by kragen »

jjallen wrote: post #247
betaby wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s over regulation to everyone who doesn’t have sesame allergies. It’s lifesaving to those that do. Somehow bakeries in Switzerland are doing just fine with sesame being a declared allergen and keeping them separate but American ones just can’t be bothered to handle a life threatening ingredient thoroughly carefully.

well, until now, bimbo's breads were sesame-free, and now they'll presumably have sesame in them. so people in the usa with sesame allergies will have to cook their own bread at home now, unless they're lucky enough to have access to a small artisanal bakery

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

#286

Post by kragen »

ehnto wrote: post #284
john_the_writer wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a scale difference. If you're making bread product for a million people you have a massive factory.. And nuts be there

If the regulations had teeth and they weren't allowed to cross contaminate at all, they would build a process that achieves that. Instead they get to put a few labels on there and just accept that they'll lose some customers who are allergic, save some money not building a new process.

you have misunderstood the situation and are suggesting that they enact the regulation that they did actually enact, which is the one that led to this situation

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

#287

Post by Leherenn »

jjallen wrote: post #247
betaby wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s over regulation to everyone who doesn’t have sesame allergies. It’s lifesaving to those that do. Somehow bakeries in Switzerland are doing just fine with sesame being a declared allergen and keeping them separate but American ones just can’t be bothered to handle a life threatening ingredient thoroughly carefully.

I checked the couple of bread products (from Migros) I have at home, and they all say "may contain sesame"? Maybe that's not a representative sample though.

I'm not sure what the difference is, except the US goes one step further and asks "please don't say it may have an allergen if you don't have to". It results in products definitely having the allergen, but is "may contain" any better than "definitely contains"?

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

#288

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

morsch wrote: post #260
rufus_foreman wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's hilarious to me that it's just a given that bread is made in a factory-like setting as opposed to an actual bakery. They still exist, and some of them just make plain bread, which means they don't handle nuts. I'm sure their product is more expensive, but it's not clean room, vacuum chamber expensive. An ecosystem of centralized, mass production of baked goods is part of the problem, at least.

I'd honestly trust the factory more than the local bakery if a single Sesame seed could kill me. At least at that scale, it'd both have to happen and I'd have to be the one to have it happen for. In a bakery the Sesame seed items would probably be made within 5ft of everything else.

>They still exist, and some of them just make plain bread,

Honestly have never seen this, every bakery bakes at least something else that can be described as more than just plain white bread.

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

#289

Post by seanmcdirmid »

harimau777 wrote: post #229
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If producer A just puts sesame in their products, and that means they can undercut producer B who spends the money to comply with the spirit of the regulation, producer B goes out of business because their expenses are higher. So what do you expect would happen? Consumers like cheaper rather than higher prices, this isn't a new thing.

Pass regulations that prevent producer A from undercutting producer B?

You aren’t wrong, but it isn’t workable. Regulations can become very specific to prevent loopholes in compliance, but to the point that the government is just driving the business and it might well be socialized.

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

#290

Post by vasco »

jjallen wrote: post #247
betaby wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s over regulation to everyone who doesn’t have sesame allergies. It’s lifesaving to those that do. Somehow bakeries in Switzerland are doing just fine with sesame being a declared allergen and keeping them separate but American ones just can’t be bothered to handle a life threatening ingredient thoroughly carefully.

It's only lifesaving if you want to risk your life. If I have a deadly allergy I'm staying away from certain food groups and am not going to leave my health in the hands of some crappy labels. Have something else other than bread. That's how many people I know with allergies deal with it and it seems the most reasonable approach. In this day there's so many different foods to eat, its easy to have variety without risking it.
Post reply on HN