r/nottheonion • u/lambunctious • 3d ago
FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/26/g-s1-6238/fda-warns-bakery-foods-allergens338
u/Granite_0681 2d ago
Is the Consumer Protection Agency going to after anyone that sells in California next? The amount of things that get the “may cause cancer in the state of California” sticker just because it’s cheaper to label than to test and prove quantities is a lot.
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u/The-Last-Lion-Turtle 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's not even because it's cheaper to label everything.
The law makes no distinction based on dosage, so I think most of these products are accurately labeled as containing trace amounts of carcinogens.
One of them is created any time food is heated. https://www.fda.gov/food/process-contaminants-food/acrylamide
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u/tbite 2d ago
The link you posted stresses the importance of doses. The law in this case is the perfect example of individuals using a blanket policy to feel safe/avoid something. Only that this time it is coming from the lawmakers.
In reality, it makes little sense to post the cancer warning, given what the research actually concludes. There might be another way to achieve this. Such as an acrylamide rating that is indexed to normal good consumption. And public awareness on what acrylamide is and might do in humans.
Right now that law is doing the same thing that the FDA don't like, but on the law side of the argument.
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u/The-Last-Lion-Turtle 2d ago
These are tons of these chemicals. It doesn't make sense to make a rating for each. As far as I know the only way you could get a carcinogenic amount of this chemical is if you bought a purified bottle of it from a chemical company.
Only posting a warning when the dosage is remotely close to toxic or carcinogenic is a much better policy.
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u/tbite 2d ago
The warnings however do not state what the research concludes. I googled California warnings to be sure (I have seen one up close, but didn't want to rely on memory). The warnings state for example that they are known to cause cancer. This warning is as deceiving as it is informative. The research states that its effects in humans are inconclusive and moreover even if does cause cancer in humans (which the research doesn't state) it would be in specific large doses. I think the number of warnings you would actually need to put on food if you go by this reasoning would probably cover up the entire packaging. Zero dosage consideration and even inconclusive cause and effect. That is a massive leeway. I don't think the cancer warning is justified. I am a researcher myself. I may not be an expert in that field, but I understand data and findings, etc.
Note, I actually do feel concerned about acrylamide. I don't over toast my bread, I don't like charring food etc. So, I am not dismissing the seriousness of these findings. All I am saying is they are jumping the gun. And it is fair to say this because it is poor precedence.
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u/Medium_Pepper215 2d ago
“though the lab used higher amounts than found in human food” fear mongering when you literally posted an article as a “haha gotcha” that disproves you. get a grip and live in reality
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u/Stryker2279 2d ago
NEWS FLASH DIPSHIT THAT'S HIS ENTIRE POINT. The law doesn't talk about dosages which is the important thing. But because the law DOESNT mention dosages, even food can be labeled as "containing a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer" because it does in fact contain a chemical that, IN HIGH ENOUGH DOSES, can cause cancer.
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u/thegreatgazoo 2d ago
Or the "this building contains something that can cause cancer". Meanwhile they didn't have to tell you what or where it is or how much there is.
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u/snowtater 2d ago
The sun causes cancer, so if a building has a courtyard with benches does that count? It is a possible environmental hazard.
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u/Superseaslug 2d ago
I genuinely wonder the overall carbon footprint of all the prop 65 stickers and labels that aren't necessary. They're literally on everything.
Next they're gonna try and put a prop 65 label on the sun because it can give you skin cancer
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u/ssczoxylnlvayiuqjx 2d ago
What if the label itself has chemicals known to cause cancer?
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u/moderngamer327 2d ago
Well you’d have to label the label, but then that label needs a label but then…
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u/beaverattacks 3d ago
If they're processed in the same factory as shit that does contain allergens they very well should
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u/BrookeBaranoff 2d ago
They were putting may contain allergen labels on things that weren’t even processed in the same factory. It’s lazy labeling on their part and we pay for it so we should know what’s in our food.
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u/Medium_Pepper215 2d ago
except you can’t guarantee the ingredients they bought weren’t cross contaminated. when you get shit from overseas from under paid farmers making 50¢ a day they aren’t gonna give a shit about the intricacies of allergies and cross contamination. if you saw the conditions your food was processed in you wouldn’t eat anything not prepared yourself. ever.
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u/Pasta-Is-Trainer 2d ago
I only eat the finest chicken that was unethically raised in a 3rd world country and smashed together into nuggets with the form of dinosaurs!
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u/Caladbolg_Prometheus 2d ago
If you are buying flour and somehow you get tree nuts something went really wrong logistically. If you still used said tree nuts instead of rejecting the shipment your quality control is a crap shoot. Would make me wonder if the food is even safe to eat if they are not looking for other contamination like shards of metal or large plastics.
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u/paxweasley 2d ago
I mean if I saw the conditions the produce went through I wouldn’t want to prepare food for myself either.
I love coffee. I refuse to think overly long about how people who become allergic to cockroaches are unable to drink coffee bc of the FDA allowed maximum cockroach content in all beans, but especially grounds
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u/MsEscapist 2d ago
The ingredients are usually not from overseas but the issue is that some people are so allergic that they could literally have a reaction because there is pollen from whatever they are allergic to on grain that was grown in a field adjacent to whatever it it is they are allergic to. And controlling for that is just not really feasible so they slap the warning label on it.
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u/Jaijoles 2d ago
By that logic, everything you buy in the store should have every allergen listed on it.
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u/Biking_dude 2d ago
I have no problem with this. What if while wheat was being harvested someone was eating peanuts and some happened to get mixed in...safer to assume it's not safe than say it is if there's a tiny chance it's not. Especially because if there is some allergen in there, they're getting sued big time.
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u/Acceptable-Truck3803 2d ago
It costs more and has a higher risk to have a processing plant NOT be exposed to potential allergens vs stating they may contain trace amounts of them. Thus a trace amount by “technically not wrong” labeling keeps lawsuits at bay for misinformation.
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u/Caladbolg_Prometheus 2d ago
But mislabeling a hazard can ‘dewater’ the importance of said hazard label. See the CA cancer labels.
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u/username_elephant 3d ago
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.
I understand both sides here. Penalties for failing to adequately warn consumers of allergens are really steep so companies are understandably cautious. That's annoying for people with allergies who have fewer clear options. FDA is trying to counteract that effect.
But ultimate I think I am with the companies on this one. Regulations are important but if you make compliance really expensive it's reasonable for companies to provide fair warning rather than work really hard to eliminate risk of cross contamination. Some company will make it easier for those with allergies and will adjust price to cover costs.
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u/talrogsmash 2d ago
If I ran a commercial bakery every recipe would have: sesame, peanuts, soy, wheat, and strawberry extract.
Because not having those things in every recipe and having it labeled as containing it is just a 100 million dollar lawsuit waiting to happen.
No one can accept that accidents happen. Every time something gets cross contaminated it's because the evil, miserly business owner wanted to kill his customers and they must be punished and their business burned to the ground and the earth salted thereafter.
EDIT: I forgot tree nuts, so cashews will also be in the mix.
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u/jandeer14 2d ago
totally. i have celiac disease and i will suffer from trace amounts of gluten; it’s bullshit that there are manufacturers who WANT to put in the effort to make delicious snacks for me but they can’t afford the gluten free certification.
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u/citronauts 2d ago
My idea is to tax grocery stores and restaurants 1 penny for each allergen on any label. So if bread has wheat, soy, milk and now sesame, that would be a 4c tax on that loaf. The tax must be included in the price.
Is that a huge amount of $? No, but it’s probably more expensive then simply not doing the right thing
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u/shunestar 2d ago
I am with the companies here. Why subject yourself to a lawsuit or increase your processing costs to gain very few customers in return? Now they’ll just add a small amount of the product and no one wins. Way to go FDA.
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u/Whiterabbit-- 2d ago
unfortunately this makes total sense. if you want mass produced foods there is always going to be a chance of cross contamination. and if you don't label the legal penalty is too high.
FDA should have a category that if you don't specifically label say sesame, it means sesame is not an ingredient, but it may still be a cross containment. so anyone with an allergy would have to make their own evaluation. but if you label that something as sesame free then you are saying there is not cross contamination.
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u/MozeeToby 2d ago
FDA should have a category that if you don't specifically label say sesame, it means sesame is not an ingredient, but it may still be a cross containment.
Have you net read a product label before? "Made in a facility that also processes X" or "Made on equipment that also processes X" has been standard for decades. Instead, manufactures are adding allergens on purpose so they can explicitly label their products as containing sesame when they almost certainly wouldn't if not for the company's very purposeful inclusion of those allergens. Purposefully adding allergens that aren't normally part of the recipe is what the FDA is upset about, not cross contamination.
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u/Jazzkidscoins 2d ago
I have seen some packaging now that says things like, produced in a bakery that also uses tree nuts, or something along those lines. Essentially saying the product doesn’t have the thing but is made in the same place as other items that have the thing. I think that’s a good compromise. The company should still try and stop cross contamination but just in case some dumbass forgets to wash out a mixer the company has a little protection
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u/flash-tractor 2d ago
That "made in a facility that also processes X" warning doesn't actually provide any liability protection. Just like a "stay back 300 feet or it's your fault" sign doesn't give a gravel truck liability protection.
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u/Consistent-Flan1445 2d ago
I have food allergies and I love the kind of labelling you’ve mentioned. Labels that disclose whether a product was made in the same factory or on the same production line are fantastic because it’s more transparent about what the actual risk is. A lot of people will be ok with one, but not the other. Some will be ok with both.
When I see labelling like that I feel that I can make a more educated and safer decision. When I see phrases like may contain and may contain traces it can mean almost any level of cross contamination, so it’s not super useful. Depending on the product it can mean anything from taking no precautions against CC, all the way to doing everything possible to avoid it (and I say this from experience). Even allergists can’t decide what those two phrases actually mean.
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u/TraditionalSpirit636 2d ago
Well, there’s literally no way to have no cross contamination ever at all any. So they had to either risk getting sued every single time they didn’t put a label on something, or just put trace ingredients in everything.
No one wants to get sued so here we are.
When I was making rice crispies, we were literally told that we had to put may contain peanuts on the stuff. That was because Mars wouldn’t guarantee that none of the peanut M&Ms got into the normal M&Ms.
Now either we take the label off and get sued when that happens, or just use peanuts so no one fucking dies and the label is “more accurate”.
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u/talrogsmash 2d ago
No, they are saying that the bakery is claiming those ingredients are there when they actually aren't.
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u/Whiterabbit-- 2d ago
The labels you talk about don’t work as people still claim it’s not in the ingredients, that’s why manufacturers add those ingredients in.
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.
Some companies, including Bimbo, began listing allergens such as sesame on labels as a “precaution” in case of cross-contamination.
If the labels you mention work, they wouldn’t do what they are doing.
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u/Spice_the_TrashPanda 2d ago
Except Bimbo is literally fucking lying about that. It isn't difficult or expensive to keep an allergen in only one part of a baking plant. Factory bakeries have more than just one production line per building, so to keep an allergen out of the rest of the plant they literally just need to lock the doors that connect one production line from the rest of the plant and make sure the employees leave from a separate door. Factories like that already have multiple break rooms already because they are HUGE so it's not like they'd have to build a new one either.
And I know this personally. A non-Bimbo factory that several friends and loved ones have worked for did it that way.
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u/moderngamer327 2d ago
It’s not hard to keep allergens out 99.99% of the time. But if there is even one contamination that’s a massive lawsuit
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u/loquaciouspenguin 2d ago
This is why some food manufacturers have entire allergen free facilities. Not just one production line within a larger plant.
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u/jandeer14 2d ago
statements such as “may contain” or “produced on shared lines” etc. are voluntary according to the FDA, and you can be eating trace amounts of any allergen at any time
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u/Antifinity 2d ago
“In addition, FDA officials indicated that allergen labeling is a ‘not a substitute’ for preventing cross-contamination in factories.”
Thats exactly the attitude the FDA wants to prevent. Companies can completely prevent cross contamination, it would just cost them more money. So the FDA is hoping this sort of bullying will convince the companies to take that step. Even though it won’t work…
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u/stanolshefski 2d ago
If you use sesame in an industrial bakery, its next to impossible to prevent cross contamination within the same factory.
The only way to prevent it is to use factories and equipment that has never used sesame.
The FDA knew this when they changes the labeling rules at the same time the sesame labeling requirement was added. They knew it was impossible to comply with if the bakery uses sesame in any product.
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u/Antifinity 2d ago
Yeah, and so in theory the incentive is now to build out new factories and new machines so people with a sesame allergy can eat without randomly dying.
It won’t actually work, because the government needs to be providing grants, research, etc. To make it make economic sense to do so, if they want companies to actually make that switch. But the fact the US government is in a death spiral isn’t something the FDA can fix…
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u/s-holden 2d ago
You could build new factories and machines, or you could just add sesame to all your products...
Pretending you have added sesame isn't good enough it seems, so you'll actually have to add a pinch to everything.
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u/Chromotron 2d ago
the fact the US
governmentis in a death spiral isn’t something the FDA can fix…FTFY.
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u/TraditionalSpirit636 2d ago
Both you and the government are idiots here.
Cross contamination WILL happen. Now the people just don’t get to know that. So they have less foods to eat total now or its a gamble that sesame didn’t get near their specific product.
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u/Joe_Jeep 2d ago
Yea I feel like this also undermines a lot of people with minor allergies that "roll the dice" on the 'may contain XYZ' stuff because trace amounts won't cause much of an issue, but actually adding measurable amounts in mean they can't eat it anymore.
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u/Thaonnor 1d ago
Quick point that everyone seems to be missing. They were putting it on EVERYTHING. If this trend extends and everything gets an allergy label, the label loses its meaning and those who actually have the allergies can’t trust the labels any more - what actually contains allergens and what does not?
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u/DebiMoonfae 2d ago
What’s the problem ? Who are they hurting besides themself?
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u/anonkitty2 10h ago
There are truth in labeling laws. Ingredient lists aren't supposed to contain ingredients that aren't supposed to be there. If this sort of thing catches on, people will stop believing labels.
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u/karma-armageddon 2d ago
FDA falls under the purview of the executive branch. What they are doing in this situation, is forcing the manufacturer to build a new manufacturing facility so they make the bread in a place separated from allergens. This will help drive up the cost of the bread and keep inflation rising so congress can increase revenue to hide their ineptitude.
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u/chrissie_watkins 2d ago
Every single food maker could use that label to avoid litigation, leaving allergy sufferers nothing to eat. It reminds me of every transaction or agreement having an awful contract attached, leaving no way for people to get service without agreeing to something they want to refuse.
Just saw a new dentist, and right before I was required to sign a stack of contracts that I did NOT want to sign. And I just wrapped up a settlement with a gym over them violating their own contract. New lease basically lets the landlord have his way with me.
And I just got another data breach letter in the mail from a company who bought a company who bought my data presumably from a doctor's office.
Sorry this set me off.
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u/flash-tractor 2d ago
Your whole premise is wrong because the "may contain" and "processed in a facility that also uses X" labels don't provide any liability protection.
Now they're just going to start adding a tiny pinch sesame in every product so they can satisfy the FDA regulations.
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u/Diamondsfullofclubs 1d ago
the "may contain" and "processed in a facility that also uses X" labels don't provide any liability protection.
What is their purpose?
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u/timelessblur 2d ago
sad part is the FDA to do it as the real reason they are putting that BS label on there is to causes us to get even more desensitized to it so when they do start throwing that stuff in no one will notice and they can claim see we warned you.
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u/HomeOwner2023 3d ago
it’s like the FDA has never heard of r/UnethicalLifeProTips. The bakeries will just add a handful of sesame seeds in each batch of dough and keep the label.