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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

#321

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…

The food manufacturer is supposed to follow GMP and prevent allergens for being in foods they shouldn't be in.

"Prevent allergens" means a 100% certainty that there are no trace amounts. This would require clean-room conditions for the entire factory, deep cleaning everything (including the inside of machinery) between each batch, and doing similarly extreme things across the entire supply chain. How do you think this will be financed?

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does. It also good for the people with allergies as they can confidently buy that bread. When FDA declares a new allergen, the top lawyer of the company that has presence from NY to SF seats down with the CEO, they then ask all the manufacturing units to do an audit of the said allergen use and then hire a third party auditor to verify if the allergen is used at all not just at their retail locations but in th…

> For a large company this is a millions of dollars The FDA was expecting that companies spend millions to ensure that the products are free of sesame to help people with allergies, but companies realize that it's easier to just add sesame into their products. I am not sure the government could do now to help people with sesame allergies. Ban sesame outright from certain products? Mandate that certain companies produ…

Adding an allergen in quantities where it has no meaningful effect is attempting to flout a regulation. It's like bringing money into the country by spitting it among fellow travellers. In a functioning system the authorities would have the power to investigate and use discovery to identify cases where allergens are being added deliberately for no other reason than flouting rules. They should then be able to issue substantive fines to encourage actual compliance.

Its not like adding small amounts of an allergen is a victimless. Lots of people with moderate to serious allergies eat things every day which "may contain" their allergen.

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

#323
post #285

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.

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

"will have to cook their own bread at home now"

Serious question as a non native english speaker, is this a correct way of saying it?

I think bread is usually baked in an oven ..

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

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes it does. It also good for the people with allergies as they can confidently buy that bread. When FDA declares a new allergen, the top lawyer of the company that has presence from NY to SF seats down with the CEO, they then ask all the manufacturing units to do an audit of the said allergen use and then hire a third party auditor to verify if the allergen is used at all not just at their retail locations but in th…

People with allergies and various food diggestion problems are not a real market for bread-makers. As in, they make sense for industrial products that do not spoil fast. Means, packaged goods, with lots of additives, tailored to them and a shelf life going into weeks.

Bread is made fresh every day, has a shelf-life of 3 days tops. The logistics are usually measured in hours. The effort to scrub the bakery, transport the gluten-free/nut-free/whatever every day, seperated is thus non specialized and a huge cost in addition to a production of a small facility. So you can get gluten-free bread by a industrial facility speacilized on it, wrapped in plastic. But you can not get it from your local bakery chain.

Add to that the legal damocles swoard hanging over you and mixed artisanal production of small quantities becomes fiscally irresponsible for small buisnesses. In theory you could open a bakery, tailored to a specific allergy set in a dense urban environment. But the rest of the world, a drive away from you, will not have that option.

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

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent of a child with a severe sesame allergy, you clearly don’t understand food allergies and how severe they can be. If my child ingests sesame, they go into anaphylactic shock and without an epipen administered in minutes they will die. There are definitely questions of how to best inform consumers that have severe food allergies. But I’ve been really underwhelmed with the dialog here on this. It would be lo…

No, you don't have a right to buy bread in your situation. Take responsibility, assume labels lie, and bake all the bread yourself.

I would argue that they have the _right_ to buy bread, but they also have the _responsibility_ to ensure that their child does not eat affected (or possibly-affected) bread.

These labels shift the responsibility. And that is a responsibility that the companies making bread just are not willing to take.

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

#326

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

Don't you start with that. It's the producers that have to bear the cost, if you just don't expand on what happens next, prices will stay the same! /s

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are factories where product assembly happens to involve edible parts. And looking at the picture of the """bread""" at the start of the article, it shows. That's not bread, that's an industrial product.

Yes, almost all food these days is an "industrial product" at some point in the pipeline. That's the reality of living in an industrial society and not an agrarian one.

Not at all. Even in this industrial society it is possible to buy raw ingredients and cook yourself and many people do it.

(and as far as I know, many studies imply that is healthier, than heavily processed food, filled with conservatives, additives and whatever)

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

#329
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The food industry has special industrial X-ray machines so that if the hamburger meat grinding machine has a blade snap off, you don't send a customer a hamburger with a blade in it.

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are factories where product assembly happens to involve edible parts. And looking at the picture of the """bread""" at the start of the article, it shows. That's not bread, that's an industrial product.

Yes, and this is what a bakery for basic loaves of bread looks like.[1] And here's one for "artisanal" bread, from the same manufacturer.[2] Notice how similar the processes are. The "artisanal" plant has a few more stations, including a "decoration" station where the sesame seeds, etc. go on top. Artisanal plants tend to be more reconfigurable, the same line can produce a few different products. [1] https://www.yout…

Interesting videos.

Probably the key thing for me is how much of the process in both videos is just exposed to normal air. If sesame is as deadly as some people in this thread are making out and a few grains of sesame dust could kill you, then absolutely the current warning labels seem justified if any loaves are made in a factory that has sesame anywhere. Perhaps there's some in the air, perhaps a worker has some dust on their clothes (which could even affect them travelling to a different factory or even location). What next? Should we demand completely sterile factories and for all the workers to wear full hazmat suits?

It does seem simpler to just allow the labeling to continue with the warning about the possibility, and people with allergies can choose to not eat bread at all, or find a baker who can offer a guaranteed sesame free product. It'll probably cost more to make that guarantee (less demand, limited product range, etc), but if people with allergies want bread so badly that it's worth paying the extra, there will be a sustainable business opportunity. Maybe only artisanal bakers will bother, maybe only those owned by people with the allergies themselves, but if there's an overlap between how much it costs to make that guarantee and how much someone is prepared to pay, somebody will make that business. But if you have an allergy, and you're not prepared to pay for what it costs to protect yourself, why you should expect everyone else to subsidise that?

I say this as someone with allergies myself. I have developed allergies to some common fruits (weirdly, ones I used to love and have eaten for most of my life) that have given me reactions ranging from itchiness to fairly severe throat swellings. I deal with that by not eating those fruits or things containing them. There's plenty of other food in the world that I can have instead.

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