16 ms·

I get that this seems like an overreach, but America is incredibly safe for people with allergies and it's because of enforcement like this. In my 36 years of b

• dgrin91 2y ago
  (not try to troll, genuine question) Do you believe milk should be labeled with "contains milk"
  • macqm 2y ago
    Do you know if "I can't believe it's not butter" contains butter?
    • Hizonner 2y ago
      That's pretty much irrelevant to whether you know if butter contains butter.
      • dcrazy 2y ago
        Is “almond butter” butter? What about “clarified butter”?
        • Hizonner 2y ago
          First of all, this isn't either of those. It's just plain old butter, labelled as such. Secondly, people in general also know what those are.
    • chrismcb 2y ago
      That is a different question. If something is labeled "butter"it is probably butter. If it is labeled "not butter" it definitely should have a label that says "might contain butter. Now I understand the labeling and allergy concerns. Like does "almond milk" contain milk? I didn't know but it probably contains almonds or almond extract.
      • undersuit 2y ago
        So cookie butter is a butter that contains milk?
        • sib 2y ago
          Sorry, what the heck is "cookie butter" (native English speaker here, in case it matters...)?
          • undersuit 2y ago
            Ha, why would a non-native English speaker ever be shopping in our glorious American stores? /s Cookie butter is sweet spread primarily made of ground up cookies and is from France/Belgium/the Netherlands.
        • hoppyhoppy2 2y ago
          Do you mean cookie batter?
          • undersuit 2y ago
            I do not, but cookie batter should also be labelled if it has dairy/butter.
  • bokoharambe 2y ago
    Obviously not, but Americans regularly tell me a dish doesn't contain milk, only for me to find out that it contains butter. The labels help.
    • gkoberger 2y ago
      Yup, and this is why the labels exist. So many people confidently "guess" when asked, and I've had to ask a few times for them to check the label.
    • crazygringo 2y ago
      Surely the context matters though? In a culinary context, something can obviously be made with lots of butter and no milk. In an allergen context it's totally different, but isn't the normal question whether it contains dairy? I mean, in a regular cooking context, the Americans sound totally correct to me, unless they know you're asking because you're allergic.
    • Ferret7446 2y ago
      I highly doubt the "contains" label would matter in this case, given that butter IS labeled as such and yet your anecdote stands. Which is to say, that the label missing from this particular batch is likely to have had zero impact positive or negative on the overall situation.
  • pdpi 2y ago
    Depends. Dairy milk? Oat milk? Soy milk?
  • gkoberger 2y ago
    Yes. Oat milk / almond milk / etc doesn't contain "milk". There's a section for both "ingredients" and "contains" on every label, and "contains" specifies if it includes "milk" as defined by the FALCPA.
    • bobthepanda 2y ago
      yeah. there was a proposal by big dairy to ban alternative milks from calling themselves "milk" at all, but there was a public outcry about it and it was found to be overstepping, not least because alternative milks have existed for hundreds of years and been called as such.
    • dylan604 2y ago
      now we get into the area of should these products be called milk when they don't have milk. if there's regulations that say a package must list what is inside, shouldn't there also be regulations that say you can't list ingredients that are not inside?
      • mrguyorama 2y ago
        Note that, if the labeling for the "contains" section is accurate, I do not have to give a fuck what some marketing wonk has decided they have to call their product for my safety. THAT's why this isn't about government overreach. The SANCTITY of the labeling is important, so that it can be relied on NO MATTER WHAT
        • Ferret7446 2y ago
          You really should give yourself more agency. The only person you can rely on is yourself, if for no other reason than mistakes happen (case in point). And then what? Maybe your relatives can sue the company after you died. Fat lot of good that does for you. Please don't blindly trust the labeling and exercise some basic common sense. Do you really want to be in the afterlife, thinking "well, the box didn't say milk, so how could I have known that butter contains milk"?
      • bobthepanda 2y ago
  • dcrazy 2y ago
    Not who you’re replying to, but yes, because “alternative milks” like almond milk, oat milk, etc. do not contain (dairy) milk. Dairy farmers raised this objection and (temporarily?) forced producers of milk alternatives to stop using the standalone word “milk” on their packaging, but I still see it as part of a compound word on packaging. Thus “chocolate milk” and “strawberry milk” mean milk mixed with chocolate or strawberries, while “oatmilk” and “almondmilk” may contain no milk at all. Though I’m not sure whether a product that mixed almond flavoring into dairy milk could be labeled “almond milk”. People with dairy allergies shouldn’t be relying on the presence or absence of a space to determine if a product is safe for consumption.
    • hollandheese 2y ago
      Shouldn't the others carry a label "does not contain milk" rather than putting "contains milk" on regular milk?
      • simoncion 2y ago
        No. Your rule explodes into "Label every vaguely-relevant allergen your food does not contain.". Not only is that a rule that's inevitably going to miss something in the long run, it's WAY more complicated than the "Label the allergens your food does contain." rule.
        • hollandheese 2y ago
          No. That's utterly ridiculous. Milk is already a listed ingredient of milk and butter. It does not need an extra label. Also, if a product claims to be Milk and it isn't, that fact should be stated to stop confusion.
          • simoncion 2y ago
            > Also, if a product claims to be Milk and it isn't, that fact should be stated to stop confusion. Centuries of past labeling disagree with you here. Non-dairy "milks" have been called "milk" for ages. That's going to be impractical to change. > Milk is already a listed ingredient of milk and butter. It does not need an extra label. "Explicitly and separately listing allergen classes of a food product in addition to listing specific allergenic ingredients in the ingredients list." is the entire practice most of the folks in these threads are talking about. If you disagree that that practice has any value, then we are not going to have much of anything to agree on.
  • fragmede 2y ago
    I think they should have a full mass spec analysis given for it. I've tried lactose free milk and it turns out it's not just the lactose in milk I'm allergic to.
    • maxerickson 2y ago
      Of course I don't know your situation, but most lactose intolerance is not an allergy, it's an inability to produce lactase, so the lactose gets digested by excited microorganisms instead of processed by your body. This often causes discomfort, as the microorganisms don't care if things go smoothly.
  • conradev 2y ago
    Yes. There are many drinks that are labeled "milk" that don't contain milk proteins, but we now have "animal-free dairy milk", which does. I can absolutely see someone being confused as to whether a given product labeled as milk will trigger their allergies: https://perfectday.com/blog/why-animal-free-dairy-still-contains-a-milk-allergen/ https://perfectday.com/blog/why-animal-free-dairy-still-cont... The dairy industry has always fought the FDA on this, arguing that anything besides milk from a cow should not be allowed to be labeled as milk: https://agfundernews.com/dairy-farmers-urge-fda-to-crack-down-on-animal-free-dairy-milk-labels https://agfundernews.com/dairy-farmers-urge-fda-to-crack-dow... https://www.nmpf.org/on-almonds-dont-lactate-anniversary-dairy-farmers-call-on-fda-to-do-its-job/ https://www.nmpf.org/on-almonds-dont-lactate-anniversary-dai... The matrix is big and will only continue to grow: lactose-free milk, animal-free dairy milk, almond milk, oat milk, strawberry milk, etc. Multiply that across milk-derived product analogues like butter and ice-cream and it becomes even more confusing. The meaning on the allergy label is quite specific!
• Hizonner 2y ago
  The part that's out of whack is the part where they tell consumers who have already bought the butter to throw it away. In order to have received that direction, you must have already seen the recall notice itself, which tells you the butter has milk in it. It's not so bad if they pull the stuff that hasn't sold.
  • gkoberger 2y ago
    You might know about the recall, but does someone visiting your house know that? Does a random chef who gets an allergy notification at a restaurant know about the recall? EDIT: Again, people are trained to trust the labels – not to parse the marketing. That's why they exist. If someone in a kitchen says "grab the dairy-free butter", the most accurate way to check is to glance at the "Contains" label. Once that trust is broken, the label is useless.
    • lolinder 2y ago
      > Does a random chef who gets an allergy notification at a restaurant know that? I certainly hope that anyone cooking food at a restaurant knows that butter is a milk product.
    • Hizonner 2y ago
      > You might know, but does someone visiting your house know that? Well, yes, because 99 percent of people in general know that butter is made from milk, and that includes 100 percent of the people who might visit my house. And if I did somehow have a visitor so profoundly broken that they didn't know it, I would notice that. Also approximately 100 percent of professional cooks know that butter is made from milk.
      • readthenotes1 2y ago
        And, the people who don't know that butter is made out of milk probably cannot read the contains milk symbols on the box
      • netsharc 2y ago
• Alupis 2y ago
  > Everyone with an allergy knows to check that section of the packaging (it comes after the long list of ingredients), and you can trust it to be accurate. It can't just be right most of the time... it has to always be right. Right, so if you pick up a package that says "Unsalted Butter" and nothing else, who the hell is going to assume no milk was used? Even worse when the ingredients listed on the same box say Milk as literally the only ingredient. Along the same lines, if you have a peanut allergy and you buy a jar that says Peanut Butter with an ingredients list that starts with "Peanuts", you kind of deserve to pay the stupid tax. > If that trust is broken, America will be a much less safe place. America can simultaneously be the safest place on earth for those with food allergies, while avoiding this kind of bureaucratic nonsense. Instead, to please some faceless career bureaucrats, 80,000 pounds of butter will be destroyed to "protect" the dumbest among us.
  • gkoberger 2y ago
    I get your point, of course. But there's a lot of foods that say butter that don't contain "Milk". Does "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" contain milk? Does Shea butter? Does Garlic butter? Are you so sure you're right about each of these that you'd risk someone's life over it? In the US, packaging is guaranteed to have an accurate "contains" section. It's not just a nice-to-have; people's lives depend on it. I get that this is a pretty clear example that it contains milk – but that's what makes it interesting. Lives may not be at stake here, but the trust in the "contains" label is. We can't leave it up to "well, most people should know" – it has to be consistently enforced, or it becomes completely useless. Couldn't I say the opposite? "Instead, to please some faceless career Costco executives, the trust in the 'Contains' labeling will be destroyed to "protect" the people who mislabeled their product."
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • Alupis 2y ago
      > But there's a lot of things that say butter that don't contain "Milk". In the US, packaging is guaranteed to have an accurate "contains" section. The box of Unsalted Butter already says "Milk" in the ingredients list. It does not need a second warning that says "Contains Milk". The article seem to be confusing the two - they are two different "labels" on the same packaging. Is there a human alive that would read the ingredients list and think to themselves, "Hmm, it says Milk is an ingredient, but I don't see a 'Contains Milk' warning, so it probably doesn't contain milk!"? That is the bureaucratic nonsense people are sick and tired of.
• readthenotes1 2y ago
  I think that is quite a bit of overreach. It's like requiring peanut butter to contain another label that says contains peanuts
  • maxerickson 2y ago
    Requiring the extra labeling even when it seems redundant increases clarity for consumers and simplifies the rules. It's fine. At least, I doubt that you can write a set of rules for declaring allergens that is shorter if you do include exceptions to the labeling requirements. And I think there's a pretty strong argument that treating the ingredients and allergens as separate sections makes the allergens easier to interpret than sometimes requiring reading both.
  • 8note 2y ago
    I would not be surprised if there's peanut butter around that doesn't have any peanuts in it
• sokoloff 2y ago
  Starting in 2023, add sesame to that list. And then of course due to these labeling laws, you get allergens purposefully added to foods as the easiest and cheapest way to comply with the law: https://apnews.com/article/sesame-allergies-label-b28f8eb3dc846f2a19d87b03440848f1 https://apnews.com/article/sesame-allergies-label-b28f8eb3dc... Does that help people with sesame allergies? Unclear overall as it both helps and harms them.
  • mrguyorama 2y ago
    So the government says "If you have an allergen and don't label it, you will be punished." Industry decides "It would cost a little money to find out if we have sesame in our product, so instead just add a little sesame and then label it" And you blame THE GOVERNMENT?! The one hurting allergic people here is the company putting sesame in everything so they don't have to give a shit about people with allergies. I'm so tired of American companies taking the dumbest, most harmful routes to things, and all of you stand up and shout at THE GOVERNMENT, as if Biden himself told Nestle to just put sesame in everything. Saner populations would correctly be angry at the companies making these overtly harmful decisions.
    • nessguy 2y ago
      It’s perfectly logical. Even if the company doesn’t intentionally have sesame in their product, what if one of their suppliers gives them sesame tainted flour or something? If they don’t have a ‘May contain sesame’ warning then they might lose tons of money because they have to recall the product later. The problem here is how lawsuit friendly America is.
      • Ferret7446 2y ago
        The problem is legislators making reactionary laws and regulations that worsen the situation. There's a reason why the free market operates so much better than a centrally planned one; people are really bad at anticipating systemic emergent effects. If the legislators did any research at all, they would not have made such a boneheaded change.
• oatmeal1 2y ago
  Why could they not apply an amended label to cover the existing "contains" section with the correction to list milk as an ingredient?
  • simoncion 2y ago
    I'm sure they could have, and still might. But, if that's notably more expensive than tossing the butter in the trash, then tossing it in the trash makes sense. We have plenty of milk and cows. We can always make more butter.
  • dialup_sounds 2y ago
    You could do that if your objective was to save the butter, but the butter is cheap and quick to replace. The time and labor required to distribute stickers and apply them to 47000 individual boxes--and this is Costco, which stocks by case--is more than it's worth.
• Onavo 2y ago
  > I get that this seems like an overreach, but America is incredibly safe for people with allergies and it's because of enforcement like this. Don't worry, if RFJ jr. is to be believed, you won't have a FDA soon. The free market will take care of the problem.
  • Tostino 2y ago
    I can almost taste the capitalism.
• potato3732842 2y ago
  I'm sympathetic to arguments about consistent labeling but don't sit there and pretend like there's no downsides. Enforcing rules to the point of absurdity damages people's trust in the FDA. That has consequences too.
  • hatthew 2y ago
    Strictly enforcing rules with no wiggle room increases my trust in the FDA.
  • gkoberger 2y ago
    What? I'm not a big regulation person, but rarely do I think you can go too far with food and drugs. This certainly just makes me trust the FDA more. (What bothers me is the annoying toothless orgs that make a big deal but can't do anything)
• bentley 2y ago
  > Under the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act, there's 8 groups that MUST be labeled: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soybeans. Nine groups, since 2023: the FASTER Act mandates labeling sesame as well.