3 ms·

> Who is "sick and tired of" allergy labels being too strict? Is this really something people get up in arms about? People are sick and tired of nonsense burea

by Alupis 2y ago

> Who is "sick and tired of" allergy labels being too strict? Is this really something people get up in arms about? People are sick and tired of nonsense bureaucracy - and this is a prime example. Destroying 80,000 pounds of perfectly fine butter so some bureaucrats can pat themselves on the back is pretty absurd. Nobody was harmed - nobody was saved. This is just waste because some piece of paper says it has to be wasted...

gkoberger 2y ago
Why don't you place the blame on the company who knew the rules and made a mistake? I, as someone with an allergy, am grateful for the "faceless" people who show up every day for an unglamorous job and keep me alive.
- Alupis 2y ago
  I am saying this rule is ridiculous, especially given the current situation. I would agree with you more if it was not a product where Milk was the only ingredient. This kind of bureaucratic action lacks common sense and protects no one. That's the kind of bureaucracy we don't need.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    If only you could rely on common sense! But companies have been allowed to run roughshod for so long and sell things that are deceptively labeled for so long that the law finally had to step in with bureaucracy. You can't apply common sense when companies are allowed to label things as X when they aren't X. Does something labeled "butter" contain milk? Does something labeled "milk" contain milk? This thread shows the answers to these questions are not straightforward and cannot be determined with common sense. We -have- to have strict labeling rules around allergens and destroy products that don't comply because if we didn't, it would just be the wild west like it is with products that are not allergens.
    - pests 2y ago
      For example of why it's not always so easy - Vanilla ice cream is being sold in the UK with 0 vanilla, 0 milk and 0 cream. No minimum milkfat requirements - they can use any fat they want. Products are confusing, we shouldn't expect people to know how today's industrial food process works.
    - anon373839 2y ago
      > We -have- to have strict labeling rules around allergens and destroy products that don't comply No, this is absurd. We don’t have to destroy products that can otherwise be put to good use. The minuscule number of people who are simultaneously deathly allergic to milk and unaware that cream is milk would be just as well served by a recall that said to destroy the product if you have a milk allergy. This is a black eye on the FDA, and at a time we can least afford the agency to have one. They should have worked out another solution with Costco.
  - jmye 2y ago
    When, specifically and exactly, should it be “common sense” and when should it have to be labeled? What, specifically, makes your new “label it sometimes but only when you personally think it needs a label” process less “bureaucratic”? I don’t get this nonsense where a bunch of people can neither empathize nor understand that people other than themselves exist and should be able to rely on relatively simple packaging, and that the instant you create inane and bizarre carve-outs, you create risk for absolutely no benefit whatsoever.
    - pests 2y ago
      > I don’t get this nonsense where a bunch of people can neither empathize nor understand that people other than themselves exist Literally just to save money, ala the Elon/Trump D.O.G.E This is a "waste" which costs money, which raises their taxes, so it shouldnt exist.
mrguyorama 2y ago
80k pounds of butter is being destroyed because the private company who made it could not be assed to do proper QA over a batch. This isn't government overreach, this is a company trying to save money by doing less QA and getting bit for it. THIS TIME it was caught, and handled, and the company is seeing a negative outcome for their lack of diligence in making OUR FOOD. What about next time? Maybe companies should be discouraged from lacking QA like this?
- crazygringo 2y ago
  This isn't QA over food. It's not like the butter was contaminated or something. It's QA over packaging. And you have no evidence that this was motivated by trying to "save money by doing less QA". US food manufacturers generally do their absolute best on QA because recalls are super expensive and the headlines are bad. But companies are made up of humans who are never going to be 100.0000000% perfect.
  - peddamat 2y ago
    shouldn't the question be, how the f does a manufacturer mess up the packaging of BUTTER. something they have presumably been selling for decades?
- andy81 2y ago
  The government could apply a fine, and shops selling that butter could put up a sign warning that butter is made from milk. That achieves the same result without the destruction of perfectly good food.
  - II2II 2y ago
    Someone buys it, then resells it without the putting up the warning sign. Who is liable: the manufacturer or the person reselling it? (I've seen plenty of small convenience stores reselling food simply because their suppliers don't offer the same prices to them as they do to large grocery chains.)
mardef 2y ago
I just wanted to look so I had context. Annual production of butter in the US is over 2,060,000,000 pounds. These aren't new rules and are in place to literally save lives. Are people really "sick and tired" of .003% of the butter being recalled? I feel like repeating "80,000 pounds" is attempting to appeal to emotion over the destruction of some mass quantity when in reality it's a rounding error.
- simoncion 2y ago
  > I feel like repeating "80,000 pounds" is attempting to appeal to emotion... It's also attempting to appeal to rampant innumeracy!
staplers 2y ago
People are sick and tired of nonsense bureaucracy Only when it's something that doesn't affect them. These same people whining and crying about macro-scale system bureaucracies will absolutely meltdown when the consequences of not having those systems in place hits (think supply chain issues during covid). So much is taken for granted in our modern world because so many are unwilling to surrender to complexities beyond their reasoning. They alone have the answer and all must know it.
II2II 2y ago
It depends upon one's perspective. I would think that having it listed on the ingredients is sufficient. That said, some people who are allergic to something will not examine the list of ingredients when the regulations state they allergen must be listed under what the product contains. It is about trust, not bureaucrats patting themselves on the back.
8note 2y ago
Who's getting sick from this regulation? Presumably not people with allergies to the regulated items
amluto 2y ago
I would guess that government bureaucracy is not actually forcing the destruction of the butter. Presumably Costco would be well within their rights to pull the butter off the shelves, relabel it, and sell it. Costco is making the call to trash the butter instead of fixing it. I, personally, am sick and tired of people complaining about various government functions without seriously contemplating said functions. Is there a way to ask for an exemption to a food labeling rule to avoid waste? I have no idea. But I can play pretend-management-consultant as well as the next person, and we’re talking about on the order of $200k of merchandise, and relabeling it would involve coordinating sending it back to the factory, applying the fixes (I can basically guarantee that, while the factory can efficiently package butter, it probably lacks the tooling to unpackage the butter), and getting it back to stores in time for the Feb-Mar 2025 best-by date. This is absolutely not worth it. And it’s not even worth the paperwork to as the FDA for some kind of exemption. What I would do if I worked at Costco is to see if I could legally sell it all in bulk to a very small number of very large buyers, and then offer it to some such buyers at a massive discount. “Hey, want 10k boxes of mislabeled butter? You need to sign some documents promising that you will either use or destroy all of it and not give it to anyone else in its present packaging, but you can have it for $5/box.” Even that might be a tough sell, since buyers on that scale probably don’t want their butter in 8oz sticks… If this were an order of magnitude larger, maybe it would be worth Costco’s energy to see if they could slap stickers on the outer packaging to solve the problem.

by Alupis 2y ago

gkoberger 2y ago

Why don't you place the blame on the company who knew the rules and made a mistake? I, as someone with an allergy, am grateful for the "faceless" people who show up every day for an unglamorous job and keep me alive.

Alupis 2y ago
I am saying this rule is ridiculous, especially given the current situation. I would agree with you more if it was not a product where Milk was the only ingredient. This kind of bureaucratic action lacks common sense and protects no one. That's the kind of bureaucracy we don't need.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  If only you could rely on common sense! But companies have been allowed to run roughshod for so long and sell things that are deceptively labeled for so long that the law finally had to step in with bureaucracy. You can't apply common sense when companies are allowed to label things as X when they aren't X. Does something labeled "butter" contain milk? Does something labeled "milk" contain milk? This thread shows the answers to these questions are not straightforward and cannot be determined with common sense. We -have- to have strict labeling rules around allergens and destroy products that don't comply because if we didn't, it would just be the wild west like it is with products that are not allergens.
  - pests 2y ago
    For example of why it's not always so easy - Vanilla ice cream is being sold in the UK with 0 vanilla, 0 milk and 0 cream. No minimum milkfat requirements - they can use any fat they want. Products are confusing, we shouldn't expect people to know how today's industrial food process works.
  - anon373839 2y ago
    > We -have- to have strict labeling rules around allergens and destroy products that don't comply No, this is absurd. We don’t have to destroy products that can otherwise be put to good use. The minuscule number of people who are simultaneously deathly allergic to milk and unaware that cream is milk would be just as well served by a recall that said to destroy the product if you have a milk allergy. This is a black eye on the FDA, and at a time we can least afford the agency to have one. They should have worked out another solution with Costco.
- jmye 2y ago
  When, specifically and exactly, should it be “common sense” and when should it have to be labeled? What, specifically, makes your new “label it sometimes but only when you personally think it needs a label” process less “bureaucratic”? I don’t get this nonsense where a bunch of people can neither empathize nor understand that people other than themselves exist and should be able to rely on relatively simple packaging, and that the instant you create inane and bizarre carve-outs, you create risk for absolutely no benefit whatsoever.
  - pests 2y ago
    > I don’t get this nonsense where a bunch of people can neither empathize nor understand that people other than themselves exist Literally just to save money, ala the Elon/Trump D.O.G.E This is a "waste" which costs money, which raises their taxes, so it shouldnt exist.

mrguyorama 2y ago

80k pounds of butter is being destroyed because the private company who made it could not be assed to do proper QA over a batch. This isn't government overreach, this is a company trying to save money by doing less QA and getting bit for it. THIS TIME it was caught, and handled, and the company is seeing a negative outcome for their lack of diligence in making OUR FOOD. What about next time? Maybe companies should be discouraged from lacking QA like this?

crazygringo 2y ago
This isn't QA over food. It's not like the butter was contaminated or something. It's QA over packaging. And you have no evidence that this was motivated by trying to "save money by doing less QA". US food manufacturers generally do their absolute best on QA because recalls are super expensive and the headlines are bad. But companies are made up of humans who are never going to be 100.0000000% perfect.
- peddamat 2y ago
  shouldn't the question be, how the f does a manufacturer mess up the packaging of BUTTER. something they have presumably been selling for decades?
andy81 2y ago
The government could apply a fine, and shops selling that butter could put up a sign warning that butter is made from milk. That achieves the same result without the destruction of perfectly good food.
- II2II 2y ago
  Someone buys it, then resells it without the putting up the warning sign. Who is liable: the manufacturer or the person reselling it? (I've seen plenty of small convenience stores reselling food simply because their suppliers don't offer the same prices to them as they do to large grocery chains.)

mardef 2y ago

I just wanted to look so I had context. Annual production of butter in the US is over 2,060,000,000 pounds. These aren't new rules and are in place to literally save lives. Are people really "sick and tired" of .003% of the butter being recalled? I feel like repeating "80,000 pounds" is attempting to appeal to emotion over the destruction of some mass quantity when in reality it's a rounding error.

simoncion 2y ago
> I feel like repeating "80,000 pounds" is attempting to appeal to emotion... It's also attempting to appeal to rampant innumeracy!

staplers 2y ago

People are sick and tired of nonsense bureaucracy Only when it's something that doesn't affect them. These same people whining and crying about macro-scale system bureaucracies will absolutely meltdown when the consequences of not having those systems in place hits (think supply chain issues during covid). So much is taken for granted in our modern world because so many are unwilling to surrender to complexities beyond their reasoning. They alone have the answer and all must know it.

II2II 2y ago

It depends upon one's perspective. I would think that having it listed on the ingredients is sufficient. That said, some people who are allergic to something will not examine the list of ingredients when the regulations state they allergen must be listed under what the product contains. It is about trust, not bureaucrats patting themselves on the back.

8note 2y ago

Who's getting sick from this regulation? Presumably not people with allergies to the regulated items

amluto 2y ago

I would guess that government bureaucracy is not actually forcing the destruction of the butter. Presumably Costco would be well within their rights to pull the butter off the shelves, relabel it, and sell it. Costco is making the call to trash the butter instead of fixing it. I, personally, am sick and tired of people complaining about various government functions without seriously contemplating said functions. Is there a way to ask for an exemption to a food labeling rule to avoid waste? I have no idea. But I can play pretend-management-consultant as well as the next person, and we’re talking about on the order of $200k of merchandise, and relabeling it would involve coordinating sending it back to the factory, applying the fixes (I can basically guarantee that, while the factory can efficiently package butter, it probably lacks the tooling to unpackage the butter), and getting it back to stores in time for the Feb-Mar 2025 best-by date. This is absolutely not worth it. And it’s not even worth the paperwork to as the FDA for some kind of exemption. What I would do if I worked at Costco is to see if I could legally sell it all in bulk to a very small number of very large buyers, and then offer it to some such buyers at a massive discount. “Hey, want 10k boxes of mislabeled butter? You need to sign some documents promising that you will either use or destroy all of it and not give it to anyone else in its present packaging, but you can have it for $5/box.” Even that might be a tough sell, since buyers on that scale probably don’t want their butter in 8oz sticks… If this were an order of magnitude larger, maybe it would be worth Costco’s energy to see if they could slap stickers on the outer packaging to solve the problem.