Costco forced to recall 80,000 lbs of butter – because of label error
www.independent.co.uk
The Food and Drug Administration has not told consumers what to do with the purchased product
  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    0·
    5 days ago

    While I get that this is a legal thing…

    It also really shows how divorced from where our food comes from people are. Also, how many products that could be called “butter” that are completely artificial and have no dairy content at all.

    • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 days ago

      In the eu terms like butter and dairy can only be used for milk products.

      But our legaslative pendulum did swing a bit too far in the other direction (imo): terms like soja-butter and so on were also banned.

      • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
        0·
        5 days ago

        The original intent of that bill was to ban plant-based alternatives from using commonly understood terms and phrases.

        It’s not like the EU banning phrases like “soy milk” on packaging was an unintended consequence of some kind of “common sense” law being applied where it shouldn’t be.

            • HSR🏴‍☠️@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              0·
              5 days ago

              According to EU legislature you can say “coconut milk”, I guess it’s ok since it doesn’t compete with dairy products. However soy/oat/almond m*lk is literally the antichrist and must be defeated.

              • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
                0·
                5 days ago

                soy/oat/almond m*lk is literally the antichrist and must be defeated.

                Sorry, I struggle to read tone from messages sometimes - do you genuinely feel that way? and if you do, why?

                • HSR🏴‍☠️@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                  0·
                  5 days ago

                  I meant that jokingly, as in, European Court of Justice is scared of plant-based milk. The way I see it ECJ put in a lot of effort to solve a nonexistent problem, and presented it as “protecting consumers”.

          • drake@lemmy.sdf.org
            0·
            5 days ago

            Thanks for the comment, but I’m not at all interested in getting into that argument. Hope you have a great day though!

    • prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 days ago

      The churning process isn’t 100% effective at removing water, proteins, etc, so people that are allergic to milk can also react to butter. The milk isn’t “milk” anymore, but it would be more confusing to say “contains milk fats, proteins, sugars, enzymes, hormones, antibodies, mucins and minerals”, IMO.

  • affiliate@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 days ago

    okay guys hear me out. what if instead they gave all 80,000 butters to me. i’m one or the most lactose tolerant people i know, and i promise to put it all to good use.

    • eccentric@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      i promise to put it all to good use

      You’re going to take a butter bath, aren’t you?

      • affiliate@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 days ago

        you don’t need to worry about that part. just give me the butter and i’ll take care of the rest

  • Linktank@lemmy.today
    0·
    6 days ago

    How about the god damned salted butter that doesn’t mention it has salt anywhere but in the nutrition label? Damned Kerrygold fucking up my mashed potatoes.

  • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    Come on, man! At some point people need to be accountable for their own ignorance. If you don’t know that butter contains milk, then you have bigger problems than lactose intolerance.

    • BradleyUffner@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      If you let the companies get away with this, they’ll use it as an excuse to get away with more. The enforcement isn’t about this mistake specifically, it’s about keeping consistent practices and preventing precedents.

    • Ioughttamow@fedia.io
      0·
      6 days ago

      Or… hold the corporate scum accountable to regulations. We just elected a rapist whose underwriters want to extirpate the dept of education. Don’t take for granted things that seem like common sense, not everyone has your lived experiences

    • metaStatic@kbin.earth
      0·
      6 days ago

      That bigger problem is probably just generations of government lying about food.

      ask for butter and 9 times out of 10 you’re getting margarine.

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 days ago

    Costco forced to recall food that was not labeled to the requirements. In this case, the butter is supposed to be labelled as containing milk. Now, you and me, we know that butter is made from milk or cream, but only a great fool would assume everyone knows what they know.

    And, these labels aren’t just for the lactose intolerant consumer. The allergen information is fed to computers that handle the automated distribution of products to various uses. That butter might end up as one of a hundred ingredients in a prepackaged donut. If the allergen isn’t on the label, the person doing data entry may not realize it. Disney World killed a doctor just last year because of allergen exposure, and that shit happens all the time. It only made the news because Disney tried to enforce an arbitration clause the husband digitally accepted when he tried out Disney+.

        • rotten@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          5 days ago

          They can announce it and that should be enough. Instead they make the butter sound like it has something wrong with it so people turn it in.

          • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
            0·
            5 days ago

            I’m really confused about what you think should be done differently. A product recall is an announcement that there’s something wrong with the product, and an offer of a refund. The “something wrong” is that the allergen info was not properly labelled. It’s your choice whether you want to get a refund or not.

            The news media is trying to make it sound like stupid government and stupid consumer protections and stupid regulations, when in fact it was stupid manufacturing.

            The completely reasonable thing you said you wanted is exactly what is happening, and you’re mad about it and blaming the thing that’s working exactly to your benefit and exactly the way you want it to, because that’s the intent of the article.

            You, right now, are being manipulated to manufacture outrage. It’s being done by people who want to profit from exploiting you. They want deregulation, so they will spin every story into something that makes you angry at regulations, especially when it is entirely reasonable and good government.

            • rotten@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              5 days ago

              I saw it reported both ways. The outrage way, where “OMG, the stupid government is wasting food” and at first the recall way, where you must return the butter because it will kill you and there is something wrong with it. There shouldn’t be a recall at all, just an announcement that the butter wasn’t labeled properly for people allergic to milk products.

              • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
                0·
                5 days ago

                News is a product, and hype is marketing. Getting you to consume their content is a sale, and they are comfortable lying to you to get you to read it. But notice that in both cases, the message is that government is ineffective. Either it is an overreaction or an utter failure at protecting consumers. Both are lies.

                There shouldn’t be a recall at all, just an announcement that the butter wasn’t labeled properly for people allergic to milk products.

                That’s a recall. Even if it’s just an announcement with no further action, it’s called a recall. In this case, it is a Class 2 recall, which means low risk and minimal effort. Retailers and distributors cannot continue to sell an improperly labelled product, so they are returning it to the manufacturer so it can be relabelled and sold, or discarded. Consumers are told they can discard it if they have a milk allergy, or they can use it because there’s nothing else wrong with it. If there is waste, it is the manufacturer’s fault. The system is working as intended with good effect.

                There should be a recall, because the butter wasn’t properly labelled and they need to let people know, even if there is minimal risk.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      Hang on a minute. My entire life there have been ingredients lists on food products, usually under the nutrition facts grid. More recently I’ve seen additional language on packaging that says something like “Warning: Contains nuts.” Did they fail to put that “Warning: Contains milk” on there, or did they omit the ingredients list entirely (which, for butter, should be cream and maybe salt). Like…?

      I also wonder if they’ll be able to put the same butter into corrected packaging and still sell it.

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        The brand’s salted and unsalted Sweet Cream Butter list cream as an ingredient on the packaging. However, the label does not warn consumers that the product “contains milk.”

    • howrar@lemmy.ca
      0·
      6 days ago

      Thanks for the informative post. I was all ready to poke fun at this move.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 days ago

        You’re not alone. The news media is a shit-stirring business run by oligarchs who want you to question science and government regulations. This is a relatively benign example, but it’s a transparent one. The way the headline grabs you, the way it’s written, and the social media commentary, it’s all created to benefit the wealthy and make you think you’re on their side.

    • taiyang@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 days ago

      My grandma, in her 86 years of life, still needs to check to see if butter has milk in it. She is the use case you mention that we take for granted! (Although at least the only real fallout of her blunder is indigestion and what she does to my bathroom when she visits and has lactose :x)

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.netEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      Now, you and me, we know that butter is made from milk or cream, but only a great fool would assume everyone knows what they know.

      In this day and age of vegan “dairy” products, including butter and cheese (not to mention margarines), I don’t think you can even reasonably assume butter has to have milk in it. Because there is a greater than 0% chance it doesn’t.

    • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 days ago

      Yeah, I work in a restaurant and allergies are a real issue that we deal with nearly every day. There is no such thing as being “too cautious” when you are dealing with the literal life and death of another human.

      • BedbugCutlefish@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        I have a lot of deadly food allergies, and I just, don’t eat out anymore. Too many trips to the ER. Sucks, cause it makes travel difficult, to plan on cooking my own meals, and basically means I can’t safely travel abroad anywhere I’m not 100% fluent in

      • Eheran@lemmy.world
        0·
        6 days ago

        If that were true at the very least you would be running around in hazmat suite, desinfecting everything constantly, every person separated in their own little chamber, the food analyzed in the in-house lab to make sure there is not xyz … you get the point, there is a “being too cautious”.

    • n3m37h@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      6 days ago

      If you can’t tell the difference between BUTTER and wannbe butter, you’re sad. And what is wrong with dairy?

      If heffers don’t get milked they can get mastitis and can be fatal to cows if not properly treated too

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        And what is wrong with dairy?

        Besides being catastrophic for the environment, a fucking shitton, actually. Maybe if you actually cared about cows’ quality of life, you wouldn’t selectively breed them to overproduce milk so that you’re “forced” to milk them, you wouldn’t take their child away from them that would otherwise drink the milk, and you wouldn’t forcibly impregnate them on a rape rack in order to get them to produce milk. (Also, it’s “heifer”, not “heffer”, just like it’s “margarine”, not “mardrine”.)

          • spacesatan@leminal.spaceEnglish
            0·
            6 days ago

            What are we going to do with all of these animals that we bred through artificial insemination that just keep spontaneously appearing, I wonder.

                • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  0·
                  5 days ago

                  Thank you. I still have no idea why people make the ridiculous argument of “Well what will we do with all the living ones?” It’s either what you said, or they think there’s going to be an entire multi-billion-dollar industry supporting tens of thousands of cows for each individual of the last remaining non-vegans. It’s so disingenuous that they’ve either never thought it through or actually just don’t care.

                  It’s frustrating how arguments supporting the overwhelming status quo don’t need to hold up to scrutiny at all. Then the ones speaking out against it have mountains of credible data and airtight logical arguments that can just be dismissed out-of-hand by complete, nonsensical bullshit, and the general public will lap it up.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

      Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

      Brown paper packages tied up with strings

      These are a few of my buttery things

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      A lot of things, actually. Milk is so clearly and consistently marked as an allergen that I’ll often as a vegan just check the allergens if I don’t have any reason to suspect the use of meat products, meat byproducts, honey, or non-allergenic dairy ingredients.

      I would probably still do a double-take and check the ingredients here, but with the movement to plant-based alternatives, you never know if someone who treats this the same way I do as basically a gold standard (because that’s what it’s supposed to be) will simply take it at face value. It’s also plausible that someone without strong English literacy but with such an allergy would rely solely on the basic allergen label rather than trying to parse more complicated English words.

      The reason it has to be strictly enforced like this too is that if you justify this as “well everyone knows it’s Butters butter, so it doesn’t really need a label”, then it’s not as trustworthy and therefore efficient to those who need it, and it risks drawing a line where not everyone is on the same page.

      • n3m37h@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        6 days ago

        That’s VEGAN butter, Not BUTTER. Its only been the past 10-20 years where food products started trying to be things they aren’t. Be more like mardrine and say I can’t believe it’s not butter

        • DerisionConsulting@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          5 days ago

          Non-animal foods have been around a long time, even commercially, even in North America.

          Henry Ford (yes, that Ford) had a soy milk factory in the 1930s, and J. H, Kellog (yes, that Kellog) sold Protose before that.

          If we’re looking at the whole word, tofu’s been around for over 2000 years, seitan has been around for about 1500 years.

          Edit: Forgot about Loma Linda foods. They’ve also been around for over 100 years in North America

          • n3m37h@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            6 days ago

            Wrong like you are about a lot of shit

            89

            And I don’t use fake butter, coconut oil and butter are where it’s at

            • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              6 days ago

              Wrong about what? It’s objectively not spelled “mardrine”, and boomerism is being used here colloquially as an attitude, not a generation.

              • n3m37h@sh.itjust.works
                0·
                5 days ago

                Thanks for butting in, your reply is adding lots to this conversation that doesn’t involve you.

                And thanks for reiterating what has already been stated. Very helpful

      • Jesus_666@lemmy.world
        0·
        6 days ago

        Yeah, I agree. You generally want things to be easy to understand, more so if there are significant consequences for getting it wrong. Making sure that allergens are properly listed lowers the risk of someone accidentally buying something they shouldn’t.

        Also, while this case is pretty obvious, is important to always insist that all major allergens are listed. Otherwise companies will slack off or make bad calls about when an allergen is obvious. It’s like with guns: You should always treat them as ready to fire even when you think you know they’re not because a mistake might get someone killed.

    • tooclose104@lemmy.ca
      0·
      6 days ago

      Next you’ll tell me that brown sugar isn’t just brown sugar and table salt isn’t just salt!

      • Dem Bosain@midwest.socialEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        I once used my grandpa’s salt on my food.

        Potassium Chloride. Those extra 8 electrons don’t mean it tastes better.