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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

#421

Post by stainablesteel »

utensil4778 wrote: post #29
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…

This is about sesame. Last year or so, the FDA changed the rules about sesame as an allergen. Some bakeries then decided to just slap "may contain traces of sesame" on everything so they didn't have to pay the cost of actually ensuring there's no cross-contamination. This has significantly harmed consumers who are actually allergic to sesame. Now there's effectively no way to know if a baked product will actually con…

labeling a product for potential allergens doesn't hurt consumers, its meant to do the opposite otherwise they might hurt themselves if they're allergic to it.

so now we have to play the game that its dangerous to label and dangerous to not label, this hurts producers because they'll be sued no matter what, it just makes business impossible.

eating baked goods is not a right its a preference, capitalism says to find a bakery that suits your needs.

and to be even more split over this, any food content can be some kind of allergen, now that what used to be normal spices are being converted to allergens one at a time we have to make distinctions like this, if i ran a bakery i would just label everything as being made with allergens too because we used to just call them "ingredients"

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

#422

Post by [deleted] »

tuukkah wrote: post #300
stoperaticless wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Forbid sesame seeds for everybody?

Not a bad idea actually. If some people can die of sesame seeds, the rest of us can manage without, sprinkle the seeds on our bread at home or bake our own bread if we can't live without sesame seeds.

[deleted]

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

#423

Post by Miner49er »

thworp wrote: post #387
Miner49er wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the case at all. It's done for gluten free foods. Gluten free foods have to be under 20ppm to be called GF, and there are many gluten free foods out there. Even some made on the same equipment as gluten containing foods (just cleaned thoroughly).

Most gluten-free ingredients come from completely different crops, that are stored and processed in seperate facilities. But even if they weren't, have you checked the prices of certified allergen-free food recently? Even if a large part of the difference is a lack of scale, there would be riots if all foods had to follow those standards.

I have celiac, I buy a lot of GF foods. There are tons of foods labeled gluten free that aren't marketed as gluten free, and cost as much as normal food because they are normal food that's labeled GF. Only certain ingredients need to be handled specially like you say.

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

#424

Post by justin66 »

stoperaticless wrote: post #291
jjmarr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has decided that able-bodied consumers should subsidize people with disabilities; companies are generally expected to make their products accessible even if there's not enough market demand for that to be profitable . Food allergies are a disability. Some people with food allergies cannot consume sesame. If you're a baker selling bread where sesame is not an ingredient, slapping "this product may contain sesa…

What world do you foresee? A world where sesame is banned from food industry? If no (which I assume), then what is the proposal? “No contaminants” does not seem realistic even in a cleanroom.

> “No contaminants” does not seem realistic even in a cleanroom.

If the contaminants don't enter the room or touch the equipment, it's quite realistic. It's weird how many people buy into the silly "why are we forcing industry to do this impossible thing?" train of thought even though the thing is clearly not impossible (and it's been shown to be a self-serving lie on the part of some industry players).

We're talking about sesame, not The Andromeda Strain.

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

#425

Post by Der_Einzige »

valicord wrote: post #133
int3 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even if it were 10%, we shouldn't expect 90% of consumers to subsidize the other 10%

I guess we should repeal the Americans with Disabilities Act then?

You won't like how popular such a repeal would be. Americans really hate the less fortunate of their society.

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

#426

Post by gwbas1c »

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?

> If the result is a safer population, why wouldn't we want this?

There's an anecdote that an AI was asked to make trains safer, and it decided that the trains should never leave the station.

Quality of life involves some risk. IE, you need to exercise, but you might injure yourself doing it.

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

#427

Post by mrweasel »

crote wrote: post #412
RenThraysk wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No where in the article does it say allergens were added. If they were then the labelling could not possibly "misbranded".

From the article: > Because it can be difficult and expensive to keep sesame in one part of a baking plant out of another, some companies began adding small amounts of sesame to products that didn't previously contain the ingredient to avoid liability and cost. So yes, to avoid having to prevent cross-contamination, they started intentionally introducing trace amounts of allergens.

That seems like the actions of a psychopath to be honest. I struggle to comprehend that someone would care that much about profit that they would intentionally introduce a "contamination", rather than ensuring a correct labeling and clean environment, making their product safe to consume to those with certain allergies.

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

#428

Post by ganzuul »

llamaimperative wrote: post #21
ganzuul wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's evil.

This is a really counterproductive way to try to understand problems like this. No one is trying to do anything evil. Every step is individually quite reasonable and well within ethical bounds. The issue is that you can produce systems comprised solely of reasonable and ethical decisions that nonetheless yield an outcome that every actor would describe as bad. That is a useful way to interpret this situation and othe…

The bad outcome can be yielded in a very short number of steps. If perceived and not acted upon, what is that? How long must it go on until we say "No, this is evil."?

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

#429

Post by jtbayly »

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.

I can’t wait until bread costs the same as drugs per gram. /s

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

#430

Post by OJFord »

carrotcarrot wrote: post #408
OJFord wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

No, very far from it! That's interesting, thanks.
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