Enforcement Of Labelling Laws

[kari]

It is my understanding, through reading posts on this board, that the new labelling laws went into effect january 1, 2006 and require companies to state clearly if a product contains any of the major allergens. I was quite familiar, even before being diagnosed with celiac, with seeing these warnings since I have always been a label reader, and I was used to seeing things like contains wheat, or contains milk, in capital bold print under the ingredients. I understand that companies are allowed to use up their old labels, but here's my situation that made me think of this in the first place - for instance, I used to drink weight watchers smoothies. I have a practice where if i see any allergen listed at all, I know the company is doing it. If nothing is listed, then you have no way of knowing if there are no allergens, or if they just haven't updated the labels yet. In that case, I look for something from the same company that clearly contains milk, and if it doesn't say contains milk, then i don't trust them. so... with the smoothie mix, i was disapointed that they hadn't updated, but it's a product they've had for a while, so it made sense that they wouldn't have made the total transition yet. I emailed them to ask about the ingredients, and got the run around from them 4 or 5 times. After clearly stating that I purchased many of their products, and had celiac disease, and explained gluten and the forms of it that I can not have, I got an ignorant response about a product that wasn't even the one I had asked about in the first place (or even similar), which said it 'did not contain wheat gluten, but MAY contain oats, barley, or rye, and therefore was suitable for celiacs' - i was irate at their ignorance, lack of detail, and refusal to listen to something I had clearly explained 5 times at this point. ESPECIALLY since this is a weight loss company - food, ingredients, etc. are supposedly their specialty. I found out later, by posting each of the 8 million ingredients in this product on this site, that the smoothies do not have gluten, but by principle and the way my question was answered, I have lost respect for this company and do not want to support them by purchasing their products.

So, I was in the grocery store today and saw that Weight Watchers has a new yogurt. It clearly did not exist before the new labelling laws went into effect, so there would be no reason to use up old packaging, since it is a brand new product. Obviously yogurt is a milk containing product, and thus should carry the bold type that states CONTAINS MILK per the labelling laws, so I was curious to check it out - of course, once again, long list of undecipherable chemical sounding ingredients that I can't imagine could all fit in one tiny cup of yogurt - but no allergen warning.

I wonder how many other companies are doing this? can they get away with just blatantly disregarding this new rule? What are the limits and restrictions? How is it enforced? How can we help it be enforced? Just as I was getting excited about how the new rules for labelling would make my life one giant step easier, this is a giant frustration to me (and i'm assuming everyone here) because now we're all back to step one, where we can't trust any product without a phd in ingredient deciphering it seems.

[lovegrov]

Did the yogurt list milk in the ingredients? If so, that's all they needed to do. The CONTAINS: "whatever" is not required.

richard

[kari]

Did the yogurt list milk in the ingredients? If so, that's all they needed to do. The CONTAINS: "whatever" is not required.

richard

that's exactly my point - obviously yogurt contains milk - but at the bottom, it doesn't say 'contains milk', which means if it contains wheat, or anything else that is an allergen, they aren't printing it on the label the way they are supposed to

[penguin]

that's exactly my point - obviously yogurt contains milk - but at the bottom, it doesn't say 'contains milk', which means if it contains wheat, or anything else that is an allergen, they aren't printing it on the label the way they are supposed to

I think you're kind of missing the point. These are the ingredients for Dannon fruit on the bottom blueberry yogurt (example only):

Ingredients:

Cultured grade A lowfat milk, blueberries, sugar, fructose syrup, high fructose corn syrup, contains less than 1% of modified corn starch, pectin, kosher gelatin, sodium phosphate, malic acid, natural flavor, calcium phosphate. Contains active yogurt cultures including L. acidophilus.

Because milk is explicitly labeled in the ingredient statement, they don't have to have the "contains: milk" statement, because duh, milk has milk in it.

But say your sour cream and onion potato chips list "whey" as an ingredient, they would have to put the "contains: milk" statement at the bottom, because whey isn't explicit.

Pick up a bag of wheat flour and read the ingredients, I bet it doesn't say "contains: wheat" at the bottom, because it's explicitly named in the ingredient statement.

Hope that clears things up

[mmaccartney]

But say your sour cream and onion potato chips list "whey" as an ingredient, they would have to put the "contains: milk" statement at the bottom, because whey isn't explicit.

OR they can list it buried in the ingredients as:

Blueberries, sugar, fructose syrup, whey (milk), high fructose corn syrup, contains less than 1% of modified corn starch, pectin, kosher gelatin, sodium phosphate, malic acid, natural flavor, calcium phosphate.

I'm only boldfacing it to highlight, the manufactorer does not have to highlight it.

[Susan123]

So let me get this straight because I was having problems with it to... If it is not listed after contains:.... then it will say in the ingredients wheat not modified food starch or something hidden.

[gabby]

Just a note on getting answers when you phone/e-mail a company (and I mean ANY type of company)

If you don't get anywhere with the customer service people, then try this: find out the contact information for someone in the Media Relations department. And then e-mail them about the not-very-nice responses you've been getting from customer service. And restate you inital question. Media relations people tend to be more in-tune with the needs and desires of their customers. Everytime I've tried this, the media relations person is horrified, apologetic, and then quite helpful. And they are usually really friendly too.

hope this helps,

[lovegrov]

Here's my understanding:

If a product contains one of the eight top allergens (fish, seafood, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, dairy, soy or eggs) or one of the allergens is used in processing, that allergen must be clearly listed in some way. If the manufacturer wants to put CONTAINS: WHEAT at the bottom they can do that. If they want to put it in the ingredient list, they can do that. They don't have to do both. If the ingredients say modified food starch but wheat isn't listed anywhere, then the MFS is from something else like corn, potato, tapioca. I've never heard of modified barley or rye starch.

I think it's always a bad idea just to look at the CONTAINS statement even if it has one. If you do that, you might miss the oats or malt flavor in the ingredients list.

richard

[jerseyangel]

I agree with Richard--always best to read the whole label. On a related note, I bought a box of My T Fine butterscotch pudding last weekend. It had 'modified food starch' listed in the ingredients. No allergens listed--an older box, I'm sure. Anyway, I called and the butterscotch flavor is NOT gluten-free. So, even with the new law, I think it's wise to read the entire label, and if there are no allergens listed, continue to call because all of the old packaging is not off the shelves yet.

[Merika]

I had a rep at a company tell me it was November 2006 that the labelling laws go into effect.

All disclaimers,

Merika

[kari]

i understand what you're saying... the specific flavor I looked at (I don't rememeber which one, it was the first one I reached for on the shelf) had a long long list of chemically sounding ingredient names, none of which was 'milk' or any variation thereof. 0bviously, being yogurt, at least one of those ingredients is a milk product, but none said that they were. and there was no 'contains: milk' etc on the label. long story short - i once again emailed / called the company and got the run around several times over - decided to chance it at ate the yogurt a few times since, hey, it's yogurt, it should be gluten free, right? And was sick for almost a full week after. thank you, weight watchers, for refusing to answer my question.