[HN Gopher] FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain...
___________________________________________________________________
FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when
they don't
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-06-26 08:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| isaacfrond wrote:
| It's may favorite example of unintended consequences.
|
| FDA orders bakers to list allergens. There are stiff penalties if
| you are allergenic but don't list the allergen.
|
| So? Bakers claim their product contains allergens, even if they
| don't.
|
| FDA doesn't like it.
|
| So? Bakers add allergens on purpose, so they can rightly claim it
| contains them.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I don't know in the US (though it is mentioned at the end of
| the article) but here, UK, they tend to warn to the product
| "may contain ..." if there is any chance of contamination and
| that indeed appears a lot on bakery products and sandwiches.
| chaostheory wrote:
| I believe that was the status quo until now.
| gumby wrote:
| This is common in the US as well, typically worded as
| "manufactured in a facility that also processes" although the
| wording you wrote is common too.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| It's much cheaper than taking precautions against cross-
| contamination, but weasel words should not be part of
| disclaimers.
| mrspuratic wrote:
| "precautionary allergen labeling" [1]. In EU it's still up to
| individual countries to regulate it, e.g. Ireland [2]
|
| > Use of a 'may contain....' statement, or similar, to
| indicate that the product may contain an allergen as a result
| of possible cross-contamination, must not take the place of
| good manufacturing practices (GMPs) in a food business.
|
| > GMPs must be in place to prevent cross-contamination
|
| [1] https://www.efanet.org/news/news/4327-efa-responds-to-
| codex-...
|
| [2] https://www.fsai.ie/business-advice/labelling/labelling-
| alle...
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| The next iteration will be adding 1 mg of almond flour, 1 mg of
| peanuts, and 1 mg milk to every ton of dough they make. Then it
| really will have the allergens.
| gus_massa wrote:
| It already happened: " _New federal food label law has
| unintended effect: Sesame now in more foods_ "
| https://www.fox9.com/news/new-us-food-label-law-unintended-e...
| (HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34116211
| (244 points | Dec 2022 | 420 comments))
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| When a friend whose son has tree and ground nut allergies
| told me this, I didn't believe it, but to her, it made
| perfect sense. With the thresholds for anaphylactic response
| so low, it's costlier not to be able to guarantee that
| there's no cross contamination than to just add the allergen.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| And imagine that it probably happens for every instance of
| centralisation and regulation in our society - with few people
| connecting the dots and tracing things back by some well-
| meaning but clueless bureaucrats
| llamaimperative wrote:
| This happens all over the place in private industry too.
| Nothing unique about regulation or bureaucracy that produces
| effects like this.
|
| If anything, centralization is the best tool to detect and
| avoid issues like this. Locally, every decision is completely
| reasonable. It's only zoomed out that it doesn't make sense.
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| It's closer to:
|
| FDA orders bakers to list allergens. There are stiff penalties
| if you are allergenic but don't list the allergen.
|
| So? Bakers look at their production processes and determine
| there's a chance that enough allergens get into the product due
| to cross contamination to list it on the label, just in case.
|
| FDA doesn't like it. They expect the bakers to fix their cross-
| contamination issues at great expense to themselves.
|
| So? Bakers add allergens on purpose, so they can rightly claim
| it contains them. It's cheaper than setting up a clean room for
| every product line.
| starttoaster wrote:
| It's closer to:
|
| FDA orders bakers to list allergens. There are stiff
| penalties if you are allergenic but don't list the allergen.
|
| So? Bakers look at their production processes and determine
| there's a chance that enough allergens get into the product
| due to cross contamination to list it on the label, just in
| case.
|
| FDA doesn't like it. They expect the bakers to fix their
| cross-contamination issues at great expense to themselves.
|
| So? Bakers add allergens on purpose, so they can rightly
| claim it contains them. It's cheaper than setting up a clean
| room for every product line.
|
| FDA doesn't like it.
| lupire wrote:
| So? Congress passes "CAFE" style standards requiring that
| every large bakery offer a fraction of their SKUs as
| allergen-feee variation, or pay a "cap and trade" fee to a
| baker who does.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| That is pretty funny, in a really sad way.
| ganzuul wrote:
| It's evil.
| fragmede wrote:
| It's the market being efficient. Markets solve everything,
| yay!
| esd_g0d wrote:
| What do you propose instead in this case? Not trying to
| be snarky, just to get the discussion rolling.
|
| Asking everyone to "play nice" or "don't be evil" also
| often does not work in practice. I mean I'd love it if it
| did, but such is life.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| 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
| others, because you don't waste your time looking for a
| boogeyman to call Evil and instead it prompts you to zoom
| out and operate on the bigger picture.
| esd_g0d wrote:
| This, a million times.
|
| My dream is "game theory" taught in schools, so we can
| all more productively discuss public policy, etc.
|
| The field of "mechanism design" may interest those to
| whom this speaks to. From Wiki
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design):
|
| > Mechanism design is a branch of economics, social
| choice theory, and game theory that deals with designing
| games (or mechanisms) to implement a given social choice
| function. Because it starts at the end of the game (the
| optimal result) and then works backwards to find a game
| that implements it, it is sometimes called reverse game
| theory.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Have you found any good books on mechanism design for
| laypeople? I picked one up (can't remember the name) but
| it was quite textbooky and mathy, and I'd prefer to start
| with a more conceptual overview.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| At least it gives more certainty than "might contain traces
| of <ALLERGEN>", which always leaves you wondering.
| brookst wrote:
| California proposition 65 is the classic example. Since it
| requires buildings to warn visitors if they contain cancer-
| causing substances, and since no landlord can possibly know
| every substance that even tenant or visitor might have, every
| building has a "this building may or may not contain cancer-
| causing substances" placard.
|
| It's surreal and awesome.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| My favorite is the Marriott in downtown Monterey. This
| building may contain substances which is known ... Utter
| crap.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| The problems with Prop 65 go beyond that. The legislation
| itself effectively made no attempt to define what it means
| for something to cause cancer. The commission put in charge
| of enforcement ultimately decided it would mean anything that
| current scientific evidence suggests has a 1 in 100,000 risk
| of eventually causing cancer if you are exposed to it for an
| entire lifetime. Subsequent lawsuits clarified that a
| substance must be included even if the risk is only proven to
| exist in non-human animals.
|
| Ironically, I never even knew this, but apparently the
| proposition only exists because Jane Fonda thought it would
| draw left-leaning voters to the polls to hopefully vote for
| Tom Bradley over George Deukmejian in the 1986 race for
| California governor. She and the other proponents didn't even
| think the proposition itself would pass. But the proposition
| did pass and Bradley wasn't even elected!
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| Now the FDA is saying adding those allergens on purpose is
| wrong. Figuratively, it's nuts. I suspect this will end up in
| court.
| ulyssys wrote:
| > Figuratively, it's nuts.
|
| ...and literally, it may or may not be nuts.
| edwinjm wrote:
| You can just label it as "might contain traces of X due to cross
| contamination". At least that's how they do it in Europe.
| alwa wrote:
| That seems to be the problem. New regulations [0] would require
| expensive measures to prevent cross-contamination if your label
| says that your product carries a risk of cross-contamination.
|
| But it's not "contamination" if it's an ingredient, so if one
| thing in your factory has sesame in it, you're better off
| adding a tiny bit of sesame to everything else than you would
| be scouring the whole line between products.
|
| Presumably the business folks have run the numbers, and you
| stand to lose less by losing the sesame-sensitive market than
| you would stand to gain by making everything verifiably sesame-
| free. For that matter, your sesame-sensitive folks probably are
| avoiding the product anyway if it "may contain traces," right?
|
| [0] https://www.food-safety.com/articles/8903-fda-updates-
| guidan....
| ganzuul wrote:
| Doing the right thing would be a lot cheaper in the long run
| because a lot of people have mental problems from diet issues.
|
| Subsidies for common allergens that become cheap filler is
| another part of the epidemic.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| 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
| quantity so they can legally say it contains it, is still in the
| wrong because that product does not normally contain said
| ingredient?
|
| What is a baker to do? I think it is wholly unreasonable to say a
| baker cannot say on the product that the product may contain
| traces of an ingredient, when they cannot 100% say it does not.
| This just seems like splitting hairs and unnecessarily penalizing
| the baker.
|
| We should _want_ a food maker to list all possible allergens that
| _could_ be present, not just _are_ present in the foods.
| utensil4778 wrote:
| 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_ contain sesame, so you either get
| to eat nothing or take the chance.
|
| It was a clear and flagrant abuse of the "may contain traces"
| mechanism. The bakeries caused harm for consumers as a way to
| avoid the coats of doing business safely.
| underseacables wrote:
| If it says it on the label, and you're allergic to it, then
| you shouldn't eat it. This doesn't harm consumers at all.
| Detrytus wrote:
| It does harm consumers by severely limiting their choices,
| especially if companies start putting the warning on every
| product by default, instead of actually making reasonable
| effort to prevent contamination.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Your definition of reasonable may differ greatly from
| those who must perform said efforts.
| starttoaster wrote:
| You couldn't write a more perfect allegory for what has
| already happened due to California's Proposition 65. The
| common denominator here is that the government gives
| companies new rules to follow, and enforces severe
| penalties for breaking them, and so the companies
| minimized their risk by following them to the extreme.
|
| It's almost like if you want a different outcome, the
| government agencies involved need to step up and do a
| more thoughtful job of architecting these policies in a
| way where the companies are forced to follow the "spirit"
| of them.
|
| I can't be mad if I create a policy, and someone follows
| it. My intention should have been in the policy, not just
| implied.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| The common denominator here is that the government gives
| companies new rules to follow, and enforces severe
| penalties for breaking them, and so the companies
| minimized their risk by following them to the extreme.
|
| Hardly. Prop 65 initially contained minimal guidance and
| essentially no teeth. So rather than identify problematic
| chemicals companies just slapped generic Prop 65 warnings
| on everything. architecting these
| policies in a way where the companies are forced to
| follow the "spirit" of them.
|
| Prop 65 was updated so that companies were required to
| put specifics on the warning label. The state even went
| so far as to start enforcing the requirements, and
| then... I can't be mad if I create a
| policy, and someone follows it.
|
| And then the state got sued because apparently labeling
| your products is simply more difficult than legal action.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| I suppose we have different definitions of harm.
| Providing a product which might contain an allergen and
| notifying you of that possibility is not harm in my book.
| thrill wrote:
| And what is the FDA definition of "reasonable" that will
| keep the ambulance chasers away from their businesses?
| starttoaster wrote:
| > It was a clear and flagrant abuse of the "may contain
| traces" mechanism. The bakeries caused harm for consumers as
| a way to avoid the coats of doing business safely.
|
| In the exact same way that every product ever invented may
| cause cancer in California, I assume? This is a problem with
| the FDA, not the companies. Give a dog a long leash, they're
| going to use the slack.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Companies aren't dogs, companies have obligations that they
| need to fulfill and they're choosing to neglect them.
| starttoaster wrote:
| > Companies aren't dogs
|
| Metaphor, but sure, quite literally they're not dogs.
| Very true.
|
| > companies have obligations that they need to fulfill
| and they're choosing to neglect them.
|
| From our eyes they're neglecting to follow the spirit of
| a policy. From their eyes, they're following it to the
| letter of the policy. Perspective.
| hollerith wrote:
| >Now there's effectively no way to know if a baked product
| will actually contain sesame
|
| You are catastrophizing. It remains the case that any baked
| product that doesn't have "may contain traces of sesame" on
| the label must by law be free of traces of sesame. And if no
| producer chooses to produce such a product, then it is
| because the number of people who want it is quite small (or
| the costs of complying with regulations is too high to make a
| profit), and it is not hard for someone to bake their own
| bread.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Is a bakery obligated to sell sesame-free products?
|
| If a bakery wants to limit their potential customers by
| saying their products may contain sesame to avoid liability,
| I don't see why the FDA should step in and force them to take
| on liability and capital costs for sesame free factories.
|
| If the FDA's current allergen rules are leading to this
| outcome, perhaps it's the FDA's rules that are flawed.
| infecto wrote:
| > It was a clear and flagrant abuse of the "may contain
| traces" mechanism. The bakeries caused harm for consumers as
| a way to avoid the coats of doing business safely.
|
| My view is that the business should be able to decide who
| they want to service or not. According to recent US studies,
| 0.2% of the population have a noticeable allergy to sesame.
| Seems like bakeries don't want to invest money for such a
| small percentage. It sucks but this opens the door for new
| bakeries to cater towards those with this specific allergy.
| Why does the government need to force business to do it?
| jasinjames wrote:
| The number might be 0.2% for just sesame, but roughly 10%
| of Americans have some form of allergy[0]. I'm guessing the
| reasoning here is to attempt to prevent "allergen creep",
| where the endgame would be major manufacturers throwing
| their hands up and listing most products as possibly
| containing many allergens (or, as in this case,
| intentionally introducing unnecessary ingredients). If this
| were to happen, we would expect a number approaching 10% of
| consumers to have a needlessly large selection of foods
| they couldn't reliably purchase, even if there would be
| negligible risk otherwise.
|
| At that point, the usefulness of requiring the labels to
| begin with is considerably diminished. Having a cottage
| industry of "actually correctly labeled" foods because the
| standard labels are poorly enforced seems inefficient,
| IMHO.
|
| [0]https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/facts-and-
| statistics
| Miner49er wrote:
| The food manufacturer is supposed to follow GMP and prevent
| allergens for being in foods they shouldn't be in.
| eulgro wrote:
| I used to work in a cookie factory, we often made products for
| private brands and in some recipes we purposefully added eggs so
| that it would appear as an ingredient and not "may contain traces
| of".
| scop wrote:
| Any other interesting tidbits from working in a cookie factory?
| I'm genuinely curious.
| dxbydt wrote:
| if you must know, there is a policy to handle cookies. There
| is also a manager for all the cookies. This manager tracks
| all the cookie handlers. The cookies themselves are stored in
| a cookie store. While legend has it Arthur Van Hoff designed
| this whole setup, if you look closely in java.net, the author
| of CookiePolicy, CookieHandler, CookieManager and CookieStore
| is actually Edward Wang. Anyways it is not important. Since
| one cannot maintain a session without session cookie,
| effectively the entire human population on the internet works
| in the cookie factory.
| autoexec wrote:
| Exactly the kind of thing the FDA has a problem with:
|
| > "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.
| FDA officials said that violated the spirit, but not the
| letter, of federal regulations."
|
| It seems that they prefer the "may contain" wording:
|
| > FDA officials acknowledged Tuesday that statements that a
| product "may contain" certain allergens "could be considered
| truthful and not misleading."
|
| As a consumer, I'd much rather know for sure if a food has
| something in it that could kill me in it. If companies really
| want add allergens to their products unnecessarily, disclose
| that unambiguously, and limit their pool of potential customers
| that seems better to me than companies just slapping on a label
| saying that the product might contain every possible deadly
| allergen and letting customers take their chances or avoid them
| entirely.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| "May contain" often refers to cross-contamination. For some
| people small amounts of allergens will not cause a problem.
| autoexec wrote:
| Which is one reason why some people will be tempted to roll
| the dice and end up dead or in the ER. It's much better to
| just know if something is in your food that will kill you.
| It doesn't help that repeated exposure to an allergen can
| cause a person's sensitivity to that allergen and the
| severity of their reaction to increase.
|
| Companies who want to sell their products to people with
| allergies should be required to actually spend the time and
| money to be reasonably sure that their products won't kill
| them. Instead companies want to be able to avoid that
| expense and just slap on a "Probably safe, but who knows?"
| label and hope that people with allergies will just buy the
| product and take their chances.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This is a very odd take to me given the focus of the
| article is that companies are explicitly saying "If you
| have severe allergies, don't buy this product", but the
| FDA is saying this isn't good enough. That is, the whole
| focus of the article is that these companies _don 't_
| want to sell to consumers who may have severe allergies.
|
| Honestly, I side with the companies on this one. It's
| just a matter of incentives - if the consequence of
| "getting it wrong" (i.e. saying a product is free of an
| allergen but then through some chance of cross-
| contamination that it ends up killing somebody) are
| enormous, I think it's hard to fault a company that then
| decides to explicitly add nuts, sesame, etc. to a product
| and explicitly state "You should not eat this if you have
| allergies."
|
| More to your point, though, when you say "Which is one
| reason why some people will be tempted to roll the dice
| and end up dead or in the ER", I think that's huge
| hyperbole. Every single person I've ever known that has a
| severe allergy never "rolls the dice", and on the
| contrary they are extremely diligent about double
| checking that what they eat is allergen free. On the flip
| side, I've known people that have mild allergies to
| products (e.g. symptoms are on the level of lactose
| intolerance) who don't worry about avoiding trace amounts
| of allergens. Why conflate these 2 cases? I have
| certainly never known actual people with these differing
| levels of allergies to confuse their issues.
| autoexec wrote:
| I agree that the FDA got this one wrong and it's just
| better to have companies add the allergen than just put
| on a "maybe" label.
|
| The problem with making it okay to just put a "this may
| or may not kill you" label on products is that more and
| more companies will do it just to shield themselves from
| liability regardless of what is in their foods (it's
| cheaper to add a label and not add an unnecessary
| ingredient than to add the ingredient and also label your
| product) so we seem to agree there. When every company
| has a "this might kill you, but maybe not" label just to
| cover their asses, large amounts of products are then
| made off limits to people who don't want to take the
| risk. When every company is using the "may contain" label
| as a shield and people start to think "Every company just
| puts that label on everything even when it's perfectly
| safe" they will take more chances too.
|
| > Every single person I've ever known that has a severe
| allergy never "rolls the dice",...I've known people that
| have mild allergies to products (e.g. symptoms are on the
| level of lactose intolerance) who don't worry about
| avoiding trace amounts of allergens.
|
| Again, the problem is that when people with mild
| allergies to products keep eating them it can cause them
| to have a severe allergic reaction and that leads to
| deaths and ER visits. It's not hyperbole, it's fact.
| Repeated exposure can increase severity and sensitivity
| and so people who feel safe with trace amounts because
| they have "always" only had a mild reaction in the past
| do roll the dice and some of them lose. Those people are
| also less likely to have epi pens to save them when they
| finally do run into trouble.
|
| All the people you've known are welcome to keep playing
| that game, but generally the smart thing is to always
| avoid foods that you know cause your immune system to
| react no matter how mildly unless you're doing it under
| care of a doctor.
| floxy wrote:
| >Repeated exposure can increase severity and sensitivity
|
| Where can one learn more about this? I thought allergy
| immunotherapy was about repeated exposure to the
| allergen. I'm not up to speed on allergies. Does anyone
| know how many sesame related allergy deaths there are in
| the U.S.?
|
| https://www.aaaai.org/tools-for-the-public/latest-
| research-s...
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Vegans hate this. Always happens with milk powder.
| gumby wrote:
| FWIW Bimbo (a Mexican company) is the largest baking company in
| north america -- when you go to the typical grocery store almost
| all the baked goods will be from Bimbo regardless of the label
| (https://bimbobakeriesusa.com/our-brands)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Why are some of their brands just pictures of sandwiches?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Whatever the 7th row, 4th column is, it does not look
| appetizing.
| gumby wrote:
| I don't know, cinnamon bread french toast with sauteed
| apricots and cockroaches is a mix of carbs, fiber and
| protein, though probably should have more protein for a
| better nutritional balance.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| They added the cockroaches to get the protein count up.
| orange_fritter wrote:
| There's probably just some ~Wordpress dev who picked from a
| selection of B-Roll. The CEO probably marginally
| understands bread and isn't a raisin french toast peanut
| butter freak.
| Washuu wrote:
| > raisin french toast peanut butter freak
|
| I want this so badly right now.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| They're filling out the grid. There are 31 brands (if I
| counted correctly) which doesn't fill out any grid other than
| 1x31 or 31x1. They filled it out to 40 because that gives a
| nice grid at the larger size (4x10) and smaller windows
| (2x20) while not leaving any empty spaces.
|
| If they kept it with 31 there'd be empty space at any
| reasonable column count (2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Past 4-6 columns it
| starts getting too busy across the screen (subjective). They
| seem to have capped it at 4, it drops to 2 and then 1 as you
| narrow the page.
|
| One filler image works at each of those sizes, but then it's
| odd to have a single filler image. Pushing it to 9 gives a
| ratio approaching 3:1 brand:filler images, someone looked at
| that and said "That looks better". The filler images are
| placed, it appears, next to their associated brand (the
| cupcakes and Sara Lee, as an example).
| thfuran wrote:
| But cropping to circle/hexagon and offsetting alternate
| rows, with 3 rows of five between four of four obviates the
| need for weird filler sandwiches. Then you can just tell
| people with other screen sizes to go away to somewhere with
| less perfection.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Maybe this is why all these breads use such a large list of
| ingredients that don't sound like food.
| floxy wrote:
| >when you go to the typical grocery store almost all the baked
| goods will be from Bimbo regardless of the label
|
| Are those those the only brands they produce? I only recognize
| 3 of those brands, and I can't even be sure I've ever eaten
| more than one of those. Maybe they are big only in certain
| regions?
| rdtsc wrote:
| 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?
| underseacables wrote:
| I think it has to do with the FDAs' extremely limited
| authority. To really remove a product, they have to use the
| federal trade commission to declare something as misbranded.
| Similar to what they do with dietary supplements.
| underseacables wrote:
| This seems overkill. We should want to encourage food
| manufacturers to list all possible contaminants.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| The driver should be to give people with allergies the
| information they need to know whether they can eat something
| safely.
|
| Allowing companies to list every possible contaminant
| regardless of how likely it is to be in a product doesn't help
| anyone. It just leads to the "contents may be hot" problem on a
| coffee.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Well... the FDA won't allow companies to just list "may
| contain" for sesame, they have to have effectively multiple
| plants in complete isolation, or... add a tiny bit of sesame
| to everything and affirmatively state so.
|
| In this case, I prefer the "may contain" verbiage... saying
| something "does not contain" is a practical minefield. If
| you're that sensitive to something, find a producer that
| makes what you're asking for, or if you can tolerate a small
| amount, or make your own food from basic ingredients.
| umvi wrote:
| At this point it seems like it might be more effective to mandate
| the opposite: labels that indicate that the product is allergen
| free for X class of allergen.
|
| That way the default (no label) = might contain allergens, and
| the presence of the label guarantees your safety.
|
| Companies that take allergen cross contamination seriously can
| tout the label (and win the business of the allergic), companies
| that don't won't resort to purposefully including allergens in
| their product to avoid having to overhaul their cross
| contamination practices.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| This makes sense from a practical standpoint, but from a
| litigative standpoint not having the warning label on those
| products with allergens exposes the company to liability.
|
| I also suspect that if there is an incident, this company might
| be able to have the government found liable for preventing it
| from warning customers.
| underseacables wrote:
| _the government found liable for preventing it from warning
| customers._
|
| Very interesting idea. I wonder if there is a similar
| situation in which the government prevented a company from
| alerting customers to something.
|
| The only thing I can come up with is FISA warrants.
| umvi wrote:
| Seems to have worked for gluten, at least. i.e. Consumers
| look for "gluten free" labelling rather than "This product
| contains gluten" labelling.
|
| If I were the FDA I'd standardize the nutrition label to have
| a clearly labelled allergen section in which you can reliably
| use to check that the product is free of X allergen. Of
| course a naive implementation of this would mean that water
| bottles and stuff will have a big long list of "gluten free,
| peanut free, dairy free" so it probably requires a bit more
| thought.
| john01dav wrote:
| It's fine to have such long lists because the alternative
| is more complicated rules that might even be subjective.
| Clarity from subjectivity or mistakes with complicated
| rules is more important when safety is at risk than having
| less text on a label.
| nsilvestri wrote:
| As someone who can't eat gluten, we look for that label
| because gluten isn't included as one of the mandatory
| allergens in the US. I would prefer if things were simply
| labelled as "contains gluten" because instead I have to
| evaluate the ingredients of things without a GF label to
| see if it's suitable.
| samtho wrote:
| "Gluten free" is a little different because gluten is a
| protein not only found in wheat, but also wheat derivatives
| like spelt, semolina, graham, and other grains like barley,
| rye, and malt.
|
| This is different from a wheat allergy, in fact, its also
| not an "allergen" in the same way that peanuts are
| (digestive problems vs anaphylaxis), and would probably be
| better classified as an intolerance similar to lactose
| (which is covered by milk but is also an indirect indicator
| of lactose that can be a false positive because lactose
| free milk exists).
| Miner49er wrote:
| It's an interesting idea, but the end result would probably be
| less options for people with allergies (unless they risk foods
| that appear to be safe, but lack the label.)
|
| We already have this type of labelling for gluten free foods,
| and one common complaint in the celiac community is that gluten
| should also be a major allergen. This would help greatly in
| deciding if a product is safe for people with celiac, since
| many products are but manufacturers don't bother putting GF
| labels on them.
| kurthr wrote:
| When Bimbo first changed Orowheat ingredients in their oat wheat
| bread (pre-pandemic) they didn't announce it.
|
| I searched the web to figure out what happened since even the
| weight of the bread was noticeably off (tried weighing it on a
| scale). The new on-line label of ingredients, nutrition, and
| weight were ~10% off (over an oz), but they were still using the
| old labeled bags and upc/barcode.
|
| I returned some to the grocery and let them know that all the
| ones on the shelf were also not the labeled weight. They were
| very annoyed.
| owenpalmer wrote:
| I wonder if claiming non-existent ingredients could be an actual
| health risk as well. For example, if someone had unrelated but
| similar symptoms after eating the product. I wouldn't be
| surprised if certain medications cause harm if taken by someone
| who is not actually having the allergic reaction they are
| intended to treat.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Product idea: Allergen slurry. A tasteless/colorless paste
| containing all known allergens. Put a tiny drop in every batch of
| product (or at least claim to) and you can slap on an omni-label
| dissuading anyone and everyone who has even seen an allergist.
| infecto wrote:
| I think this is a sham and the FDA is overstepping. 0.2% of the
| population have sesame allergies. Maybe its higher the recent
| numbers I saw from a government study gave this number.
| jurassicfoxy wrote:
| Isn't it about establishing a framework that people can trust,
| and closing loopholes? Just because the specifics are about
| sesame seeds, isn't that how the law works? Some stupid
| specific case forms the groundwork for the entire system?
| infecto wrote:
| I don't know honestly. I understand the spirit of it but I
| also don't believe a customer should not have to serve
| markets that it chooses not too. My point which I did not get
| to very well is that I think the FDA is in a weird spot. I
| understand their side but I also wonder how a bakery can
| legally and with the spirit of the law decide to not serve
| customers with allergies.
| bluelightning2k wrote:
| Doesn't this incentivise them to deliberately add allergens, so
| they can keep them on the label
| antiquark wrote:
| FDA is talking out of both sides of their mouth. From their own
| website:
|
| > Consumers may also see advisory statements such as "may contain
| [allergen] or "produced in a facility that also uses [allergen]."
| Such statements are not required by law and can be used to
| address unavoidable "cross-contact," only if manufacturers have
| incorporated good manufacturing processes in their facility and
| have taken every precaution to avoid cross-contact that can occur
| when multiple foods with different allergen profiles are produced
| in the same facility using shared equipment or on the same
| production line, as the result of ineffective cleaning, or from
| the generation of dust or aerosols containing an allergen.
|
| https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/food-allerg...
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