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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

#551

Post by smsm42 »

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 if you can't afford "safe" bread, your only choice is very unsafe one. This scenario have been played out many times, when hyper safety prices people - usually the most vulnerable - out of the market and they have to seek poorly regulated unsafe grey or black market alternatives.

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

#552

Post by FerretFred »

Cynical me thinks it sounds like an attempt by Big Food to future-proof themselves against ingredients that may later be found to be an allergen. Have they considered that the plastic packaging they use might be shedding microplastics etc into the product. Er, loaf ?

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

#553

Post by ehnto »

kragen wrote: post #286
ehnto wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No I didn't, I understand what they have done to skirt the regulations but that is what I mean. It's so easy to get around the regulations, even the new one, they have no teeth. It's clear the companies are acting in bad faith but there is no recourse.

If it weren't for companies acting in bad faith, they wouldn't have to play regulator cat and mouse. If you removed the regulations altogether, your big bakers would be even more lax with allergens and people would get sick.

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

#554

Post by ehnto »

WrongAssumption wrote: post #382
ehnto wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 aren’t following what is hsppening. The regulation does exactly that, not allow any cross contamination. So they are adding sesame as an ingredient and labeling it as such.

I did understand that. The regulations have no teeth not because they lack penalties, it's because they are ineffectual atat achieving the goal.

It is clear what the outcome of the regulations was supposed to be, products with sesame and products without. But they were poorly planned regulations, and the companies are more than happy to work to the letter of the law.

But maybe this is actually fine, because a company willing to cleanly process allergen free product can capture that market segment.

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

#555

Post by daemin »

int3 wrote: post #474
daemin wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can develop allergies during their lifetime, it's not just something that you're born with. There's also ongoing studies trying to desensitise people's allergies so that they can deal with foods more easily. So a person's allergy status can and does change during their lifetime. But my message was about the general principle of insurance being the very thing your comment was against. The situation where the va…

> People can develop allergies during their lifetime, it's not just something that you're born with. Sure, but the likelihood of that is low enough that insuring against that isn't worth it for most people > But my message was about the general principle of insurance being the very thing your comment was against. The situation where the vast majority of people pay some cost of which only a few need to utilise. No, th…

Insurance only works if the majority pay but only the minority get paid. Anything else and you risk not getting paid if the event occurs.

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

#556

Post by immibis »

practicemaths wrote: post #471
BobbyJo wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _corporations are lazy_ In market terms: "corporations try to be capital-efficient because they are competing with each other over price-sensitive consumers."

TBF laziness is the natural order to the universe. Ain't nothin doin more than it has to.

Yeah, but corporations are paid lots of money to not be lazy.

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

#557

Post by immibis »

hot_gril wrote: post #518
Viliam1234 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's way too hard (aka expensive) to tell if you're compliant How hard is it to figure out whether you place cookies on other people's computers or you don't? Even if you can't read your own source code, you could simply install a new browser, visit your website, and then check the cookies on that browser. I don't think it's GDPR that is dumb.

Cookies alone don't make you non-compliant, it's what you (or anything embedded on your site) do with them. You can also be non-compliant without cookies, but that's not fixable with a banner.

And the EU doesn't jump straight to the maximum penalty and gives you plenty of warnings to sort it out if you accidentally don't comply in a subtle way. If it's noncompliant in a subtle way that doesn't actually cause a problem they certain won't even notice.

Look how blatantly Apple ignored the DMA and how long it's taken the EU to pursue real enforcement action. It seems clear: there is no need to *fear* EU penalties unless you are dead set on noncompliance. Honest mistakes don't bring down businesses due to GDPR.

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

#559

Post by practicemaths »

immibis wrote: post #556
practicemaths wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF laziness is the natural order to the universe. Ain't nothin doin more than it has to.

Yeah, but corporations are paid lots of money to not be lazy.

[dead]

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

#560

Post by michaelcampbell »

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…

> _corporations are lazy_

Corporations are optimized to make money; doing the non-lazy thing here costs money.

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