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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

#401

Post by StableAlkyne »

postmodest wrote: post #384
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 is the same issue as Prop 65, and while we can all say "oh the law is bad" the real problem is _corporations are lazy_. Instead of making sure their products are safe, they just say everything is unsafe, because they know consumers will become numb to it. Our food shouldn't contain allergens, and our computer mice shouldn't give us cancer, but instead of taking the time to make sure of that, companies just tell…

> Our food shouldn't contain allergens

You can pry my gluten-laden, peanut-oil containing, dairy-filled pizza from my cold dead hands!

(The problem isn't allergens, many of which are delicious. The problem is not correctly labeling allergens - I think that's the point you wanted to make at least!)

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

#402

Post by jtbayly »

robertlagrant wrote: post #345
kalleboo wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.coop.ch/en/brands-inspiration/diet/intolerances/... > In Switzerland, there are also the following rules regarding trace allergens when declaring allergens: in the event of possible contamination of more than one gram per kilogram of food, the note "May contain traces of ..." must be included. The limit for sulphur is 10 milligrams per kilogram and for gluten 200 milligrams It sounds like Switzerland does…

Making sure there is less than 10mg per kg isn't lazy. It's really difficult.

But that’s sulfur.

One gram per kilo for sesame is not hard.

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

#403

Post by mort96 »

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 mean that doesn't make a difference though? You wouldn't want a separate traditional bakery with a separate traditional baker for every combination of allergens either

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

#404

Post by water-your-self »

postmodest wrote: post #384
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 is the same issue as Prop 65, and while we can all say "oh the law is bad" the real problem is _corporations are lazy_. Instead of making sure their products are safe, they just say everything is unsafe, because they know consumers will become numb to it. Our food shouldn't contain allergens, and our computer mice shouldn't give us cancer, but instead of taking the time to make sure of that, companies just tell…

Have computer mice ever caused cancer or isnthat hyperbole

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

#406

Post by carrotcarrot »

pif wrote: post #393

As far as I can tell, this is what happens any time a new restriction is introduced without specifying who must bear the financial burden. Checking for allergens has a cost! Who is supposed to pay? If you want the general public to pay for it, then mandate that every bakery certifies the amount of allergen in their bread: all the bread will cost more and the allergic people will be able to choose safely. Otherwise, w…

Overregulation is also a cost that can only be bared by large companies, it's contributed to the shrinking number of family farms and small businesses.

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

#407

Post by [deleted] »

mgkimsal wrote: post #395
konschubert wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what the margins on bread are, but I would bet that they are tiny since this is a competitive market. Meaning that this kind of medical-lab-style cross contamination protocol will either raise the cost of the product or reduce the variety and choice.

> Meaning that this kind of medical-lab-style cross contamination protocol will either raise the cost of the product or reduce the variety and choice. If the result is a safer population, why wouldn't we want this?

[deleted]

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

#408

Post by carrotcarrot »

OJFord wrote: post #164
kian wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are slant rhymes of one another. B and M are phonetically nearby, as are ia and ih and ao and ou. In no way like hacker news and cake her knees -- but more like hacker news and hagger moos ;)

I stand by 'ish' - B is plosive & M is not; that difference is if anything more apparent in Mandarin than English. Then 'im' is read flat and not like 'ià'. Of course 'bo' is quite like 'bāo', but that's your 'ish'.

Are you a native Chinese speaker?

I've noticed Chinese are very loose with their puns, and it helps that there is a lot of regional dialect variation in pronunciation.

For example a common one is 520 (wu er ling) being used for "wo ai ni" (I love you)

So I wouldn't put it past them to consider the two words as "similar"

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

#409

Post by rdtsc »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #157
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.

Ah that explains it, thanks.

I guess we can watch now how bakeries invent a “plausible” need to add sesame. Previously they admitted the true reason why they added sesame and got in trouble so to speak. So now they’ll fund some research or publish some article somewhere indicating sesame makes the bread taste better and point to that as the reason.

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

#410

Post by Verdex »

mgkimsal wrote: post #395
konschubert wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what the margins on bread are, but I would bet that they are tiny since this is a competitive market. Meaning that this kind of medical-lab-style cross contamination protocol will either raise the cost of the product or reduce the variety and choice.

> Meaning that this kind of medical-lab-style cross contamination protocol will either raise the cost of the product or reduce the variety and choice. If the result is a safer population, why wouldn't we want this?

Because it doesn't necessarily result in a safer population. This is software engineering par for the course. Just because you want some software to have some feature doesn't mean that the other requirements and/or reality will cooperate and give you a desirable outcome.

For example, coral snake antivenom. For quite a while the US only had a single coral snake antivenom on the market because it was made by a company that was grandfathered in. The new(ish) FDA rules made developing a new coral snake antivenom not something anyone wanted to do.

So of course the one existing vendor when out of business.

Last I heard (around 2022) people were trying to come up with a new antivenom but thus far have been unsuccessful.

Prescribing that things be safer doesn't force reality to conform and we have examples of this occurring.

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