California bill would require restaurants to disclose food allergens on menus
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By itself, this is not helpful. If you have a food allergy, you are used to mentioning it every time you eat out. You may be familiar with the usual answer of “we don’t use x but can’t guarantee our suppliers didnt contaminate something.” So what will happen is that restaurants will claim that everything contains allergens, or even add allergens to things that previously didn’t use them so that they can confidently say whether it does contain any. Maybe worse, they will list the allergens they use in their recipes but do not adequately communicate the risk of cross contamination in the kitchen or in the supply chain.
Instead, we also need to tighten food safety standards across the entire supply chain so that there is dramatically reduced risk of cross-contamination.
Supply chains are a major problem for people with allergies, because there are so many points where accidental contamination can happen that those at the end of the chain - like restaurants - are terrified of making assumptions because they know how unreliable the supply chain is.
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There are literally people who are allergic to water. How common does an allergy need to be for it to be declared?
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There are literally people who are allergic to water. How common does an allergy need to be for it to be declared?
I haven't looked at the law but I would assume its the same common allergens as are already required to be listed on ingredient lists.
Edit: indeed, it's the 9 most common: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, sesame and soybeans. It's in the article.
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I haven't looked at the law but I would assume its the same common allergens as are already required to be listed on ingredient lists.
Edit: indeed, it's the 9 most common: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, sesame and soybeans. It's in the article.
Seems reasonable and not a huge burden. It’s not like restaurants don’t know what’s in their food. Right?
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Seems reasonable and not a huge burden. It’s not like restaurants don’t know what’s in their food. Right?
Restaurants often don’t know what’s in their food, largely because of cross contamination. Baked goods are a particularly dangerous area for those with food allergies, due to how carelessly ingredients like flour is processed.
In recent years, we’ve seen an uptick in brands use major allergens as cost-saving filler in their products. Those are intentional contamination. The incidents of accidental contamination are much higher, as much equipment is shared in the processing and packaging if various products, so the equipment can contaminate other food with those major allergens.
Society needs to start taking this seriously and place rigorous controls on how food containing major allergens is processed and handled. Products and ingredients that contain major allergens should be carefully regulated and inspected, and equipment should not be reused for products that do not contain those allergens in their recipes. We also need to be more stringent about preventing companies from using allergens as fillers. The carelessness with which our food is handled is shocking.