I hate to be “that guy” but in theee cases, it just makes more sense to have some extraneous labeling rather than have special clauses in the regulation dictating when it’s obvious enough that the label can be omitted.
Keeping the rules as simple as possible reduces the chances of loopholes and ambiguity, at the expense of sometimes resulting in things like a jar of peanut butter stating “contains peanuts” on the label.
It only makes no sense until you stop and consider how to define and implement a better rule, when the only real benefit would be to prevent people snarking about milk having a “contains milk” labeling.
Do you think that someone sits down and makes a list of all items that need to be labeled as containing X, which is then updated each time a new food or recipe hits the store shelves?
Or is it more likely that regulators simply state that all foods for human consumption containing more than some percent by weight of X must be labeled as containing X?
If your goal is to ensure that consumers are alerted to certain ingredients for allergy or other purposes, you care very much about a product not getting labeled properly, and you don’t really care if something obvious gets the label.
I hate to be “that guy” but in theee cases, it just makes more sense to have some extraneous labeling rather than have special clauses in the regulation dictating when it’s obvious enough that the label can be omitted.
Keeping the rules as simple as possible reduces the chances of loopholes and ambiguity, at the expense of sometimes resulting in things like a jar of peanut butter stating “contains peanuts” on the label.
It makes no sense and it’s a side effect of an over litigious society.
It only makes no sense until you stop and consider how to define and implement a better rule, when the only real benefit would be to prevent people snarking about milk having a “contains milk” labeling.
Labeling for ingredients and possible cross contamination concerns doesn’t require that milk warns about milk.
Do you think that someone sits down and makes a list of all items that need to be labeled as containing X, which is then updated each time a new food or recipe hits the store shelves?
Or is it more likely that regulators simply state that all foods for human consumption containing more than some percent by weight of X must be labeled as containing X?
If your goal is to ensure that consumers are alerted to certain ingredients for allergy or other purposes, you care very much about a product not getting labeled properly, and you don’t really care if something obvious gets the label.
I’m not really sure why this is so hard to grasp…