Nearly 80,000 pounds of Costco butter recalled for missing 'Contains Milk statement': FDA
Nearly 80,000 pounds of Costco butter recalled for missing 'Contains Milk statement': FDA
ITT: lots of people wondering why this is an issue at all when obviously butter contains milk.
It’s because the company can effectively print whatever they like for the name of the product with no regard to the actual ingredients. A consumer needs to know what they’re actually buying because of things like allergies and intolerances.
In this case, and depending on the severity of the allergy, that missing ingredient warning could cause someone a bad case of the farts or something as serious as anaphylactic shock.
This being said, I’d still agree that people not wanting to consume milk should stick to products with positive confirmation that it is milk-free.
It’s because the company can effectively print whatever they like for the name of the product with no regard to the actual ingredients.
That is not true at all. There are laws that determine what you can actually put on your products, especially on food.
Yes. And Costco (inadvertently) broke them here. Hence the recall.
That was the point. If we let companies ignore the law when it "should be obvious", that gives them a lot of wiggle room to really fuck us over. And nobody wants that
Ok fine, yes you are correct in that you can’t advertise a packet of staples as a frozen turkey crown, but you’re also arguing about a different scope. Apologies for speaking like a human on lemmy and not some sort of weird internet law robot.
This is a demonstration of what I’m talking about. To save you the click, this pack of ‘deli fresh’ turkey breast makes no mention of the cornstarch, dextrose or vinegar listed on the ingredients label. ‘Deli fresh’ is itself artistic license, as the product is packaged in plastic and not being served fresh from a deli.
people not wanting to consume milk should stick to products with positive confirmation that it is milk-free.
So maybe like a package of butter that doesn’t have milk in the ingredients list?
It actually does contain it in the ingredient list (I.e. sweet cream). It just that the FDA requires an additional label warning of allergens, like contains nuts or milk, which is what this was missing.
Any reason you conveniently left out the start of the sentence you’ve quoted? Because the bit you’ve left out changes the tone pretty significantly.
In this particular situation I’d deem positive confirmation to be something like a vegan certification, as opposed to the absence of something.
Combine the absence of milk from the ingredients on something advertising itself as butter with no other distinguishing information and that adds up to suspicion for me.
That's not a positive confirmation.
The recall is redundant, it should just be a notice that butter contains milk, and stickers for any leftover inventory.
Collecting it and destroying it like it's poison is silly. If your allergic to milk, you probably should not be buying butter.
There’s an enforcement component. It’s designed to punish the producer so it hurts so it won’t do it again.
Yup. If you are sensitive to a food product you should be aware already of basic products that by definition contain them. Like telling me yogurt is dairy based.
I understand the "slippery slope" issue but what an insane waste of food just over liability and pointing out the obvious.
What about putting a sticker over it?
If I were a customer who purchased this, I would just ignore it. I assume many will do the same. It isn't worth dealing with if it isn't an issue for you.
As a person with allergies to specific foods, then don't make this mistake. Measure twice, cut once. These rules were written in blood, and tiniest violin for companies who fail it.
Yeah I guess a solution that reduces food waste while also being safe for people with milk allergies and intolerances would be to slap a big ass "contains milk" sticker on the label, maybe covering up the barcode so that 1) it can't be sold without the sticker, and 2) they can sell it at a discount. But that's probably bad for costco's image or whatever
I'll start the bidding for 24lb at $0.10/lb
lol, right! I’ll take all of it for pennie’s.
Weird, is there a crackdown on this sort of thing or did someone really mess up big? I was actually called by my foodstore today to let me know that liptons French onion soup mix was recalled because it didn't list that it has egg in it and my records show that I had purchased this. I don't know if I ever saw this kind of recall before let alone twice in the same day.
I subscribed to FSIS updates and this happens pretty often. Allergen labels are taken pretty seriously. And they send out notifications when they come across one. 🤷🏼♀️
You have an intimate relationship with your grocer.
Automated message based off rewards card info. Still it's the first time I ever got that and thought it was odd. At least you get something for giving away all your info to everyone.
80,000 pounds is slightly over two tractor trailers' worth. For the whole country, that's not a big deal.
And that small batch had a label with a different list of ingredients/allergens somehow? I'm curious how that happened.
Printer stopped working, or it got misaligned to the paper, and just the allergen message was cut off. Perhaps.
Since we're on the topic: do people refrigerate their butter? Those who do, what's your process for getting it on toast smoothly?
I refrigerate my butter and don't make toast very often. When I do make toast, I cut off the appropriate amount of butter and place it on the warm toast and let it sit to acclimate. After a moment, I spread it with a knife.
No, the spread is not amazing and creamy. It is still a little cold and chunky. But I don't care leaving your butter out is weird.
A type 1 phaser set to the lowest stun setting will melt butter patties if you just flash it on and off quickly.
Oh! Lowest setting! That explains what happened...
Butter is tasty but annoying, so I switched to those butter-vegetable oil hybrids.
They taste a bit like butter but spread like margarine.
Use a butter bell. There's no reason to refrigerate butter.
If I'm desperate I'll microwave it on 20% for 20 seconds or so. But these days I always leave a bit out.
Salted butter stays good for longer when unrefrigerated
I don't really eat toast. If it's on popcorn I'll melt it then pour it on, but that makes the popcorn soggy. I need to find a better solution for popcorn tbh
Get you a Whirley-Pop. You can put the butter in with the kernels go.
You can also get packs that include oil, kernels, salt, and butter powder that come out like theater popcorn and taste great (included some in the link above). I add some cheddar powder to that for cheesy popcorn when we have people over to watch movies and it’s a huge hit.
Edit: important note, add the cheddar powder AFTER popping, because it will burn if you put it in before popping and it will smell awful. Don’t make my mistake!
Yes. Take an appropriate chunk for your needs and nuke it for 5 seconds.
Yup, keep it in the fridge. I just slice it up into thin patties while I wait for the toast to finish then I put it on the hot toast and it melts quickly.
The problem is when they bring out room temp toast and ice cold patties in restaurants. One thing I do is knead the patties in their wrappers a bit to soften them up.
Until recently, I had some butter on a butter plate with a lid, and would take it to room temperature in advance of wanting to use it. Not the best method, but better than only having fridge temperature butter. A few weeks ago I got a French butter dish after being introduced to the concept. You can keep a good dose of butter in room temperature, with water making it airtight so the butter stays fresh. So far very much liking it.
Salted can be left out but not unsalted. I buy salted anyway, and it comes 4 bars to a pack, so I'll take out a bar, cut it in half, put half back in the fridge and leave half in a butter dish, replace as needed.
I refrigerate my butter, but I only use it for cooking. I prefer margarine for spreading.
I leave butter out. I try to limit it to a week, and usually succeed since I cook with it now. I’ve seen it turn color and taste after a couple weeks but it’s still edible and never made me sick
My brother refrigerates and claims that if you make thin slices it gets soft pretty quickly. I’ve also seen YouTube claims to that, but I must not be patient enough
I've found that even a month is fine, even, at least for salted, although I try to leave it out for much less than that.
In any case, just slice off about a weeks worth of butter from your block or stick and and leave the rest refrigerated.
Most people aren't going to bring the butter back in.
Put poison in the food that’s ok
and it probably gets thrown out then the price jacked up on the next batch
Imperfect Foods now turned Misfit Marketplace type services usually sell items like that. But I don’t see them as being any cheaper.
High chance a sticker is placed on them that addresses the issue.
Not sure that butter can be said to contain milk by the FDA's definition of milk. So they'll need to recall it again after adding that label.
They should have waited a Couple Months! This type of thing will NEVER happen under Trump! He's Protecting us (from accidentally ingesting a potential Poison depending on the Person!)!
A recall that 99% won't be claimed since if you are buying butter you know it contains milk. Gotta be real dumb to think the butter is milk free.
You do realize we're talking about the same society that requires a warning label to not eat the shampoo?
What?! You can eat the shampoo? No dog food for Victor tonight!
It's the same society that just elected a fascist dictator-wannabe. No matter how many intelligent people you know, there's enough to do that.
Maybe warning labels were a mistake...
Well based on last Tuesday, this is a shockingly large number of people.
They’ll just put a sticker on it that says “contains milk”. This is like one of those Tesla recalls that is really just a software update done to meet federal or state requirements.
Exactly. I know someone who works in the food trade industry - this isn't even that rare, small fuckups like this happen, except usually they get rectified long before local regulator intervenes
So like 50% of people then?
This is America.
To be fair, the word butter is very vague. Shea butter gas no milk, apple butter has no milk, etc.