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

361–370 of 605 posts

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

#361

Post by hahajk »

lukan wrote: post #323
kragen wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ..

Baking bread is more correct, but in my experience "to cook" is generic enough to include baking. If someone has something in the oven and I ask "what are you cooking?", it's not weird.

On the other hand, "cooking bread" is like 2/10 weird.

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

#362

Post by mattmaroon »

beAbU wrote: post #318
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…

(Non US) On almost all food labels that I've seen for the last decade or so I've seen disclaimers like "this product is made in a factory that processes $ALLERGEN" Usually $ALLERGEN is "tree nuts".

We have that too.

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

#363

Post by shmeeed »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #349
NaOH wrote: 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…

So we're saying what, in an era of atomic scale manufacturing it isn't possible to design a manufacturing line that segregates macro-scale ingredients? I've spent time in pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. They don't routinely floof active ingredients between capsule lines. Corraling shit the size of a sesame seed is trivial in comparison. So yeah, this is still bullshit.

Possible, yes. Economical, no.

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

#364

Post by alephnerd »

ralferoo wrote: post #330
Animats wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 du…

It's because the sesame labeling law was lobbied by Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) [0] who are funded by the National Peanut Board, the National Dairy Council, and a number of Soy product manufacturers [1].

Essentially, the sesame law made it mandatory to label for sesame like you would for Dairy, Peanuts, and Soy.

It was a blatant lobbyist attempt that backfired.

[0] - https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/how-fare-advocates-hel...

[1] - https://www.foodallergy.org/corporate-partners

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

#365

Post by alephnerd »

The sesame labeling law was lobbied by Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) [0] who are funded by the National Peanut Board, the National Dairy Council, and a number of Soy product manufacturers [1].

Essentially, the sesame law made it mandatory to label for sesame like you would for Dairy, Peanuts, and Soy.

It was a blatant lobbyist attempt by non-Sesame producers that backfired.

[0] - https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/how-fare-advocates-hel...

[1] - https://www.foodallergy.org/corporate-partners

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

#366

Post by alephnerd »

ryandrake wrote: post #151
derbOac wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No.

It's because the sesame labeling law was lobbied by Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) [0] who are funded by the National Peanut Board, the National Dairy Council, and a number of Soy product manufacturers [1].

Essentially, the sesame law made it mandatory to label for sesame like you would for Dairy, Peanuts, and Soy.

It was a blatant lobbyist attempt that backfired.

[0] - https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/how-fare-advocates-hel...

[1] - https://www.foodallergy.org/corporate-partners

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

#367

Post by lewispollard »

beAbU wrote: post #318
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…

(Non US) On almost all food labels that I've seen for the last decade or so I've seen disclaimers like "this product is made in a factory that processes $ALLERGEN" Usually $ALLERGEN is "tree nuts".

Same in the UK. For example, it's not uncommon to have food items that are certified as vegan, with a warning that they may contain traces of milk due to cross contamination - for most vegans, this is acceptable.

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

#368

Post by [deleted] »

ergocoder wrote: post #233
mc32 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no penalty for over-labeling. Maybe some lost sales. Not a big deal. But there is a huge potentially downside for under-labeling e.g. people dying. There is an ethic issue here as well even if we ignore money. Also, the production pipeline is not 100% perfect. They produce millions of items each year. Even with 0.001% defect / cross-contamination, it could be troublesome. More importantly, the exec who decid…

[deleted]

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

#369

Post by jcl »

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…

My understanding of the article is that some companies added sesame to their products and ingredients label, while others may have changed their label to say the product “may contain” sesame — but that Bimbo did neither of these things, instead changing their label to say that the product definitely contained sesame, when in fact sesame was not an ingredient.

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

#370

Post by krisoft »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #349
NaOH wrote: 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…

So we're saying what, in an era of atomic scale manufacturing it isn't possible to design a manufacturing line that segregates macro-scale ingredients? I've spent time in pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. They don't routinely floof active ingredients between capsule lines. Corraling shit the size of a sesame seed is trivial in comparison. So yeah, this is still bullshit.

> They don't routinely floof active ingredients between capsule lines

But isn’t that what we read about regarding athletes being acused of cheating because of cross contamination in pharmaceutical manufacturing?

“Generic Pharmaceuticals as a Source of Diuretic Contamination in Athletes Subject to Sport Drug Testing”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8635962/

Post reply on HN