I went to restaurant last night and asked where the chicken was sourced from and their response was "it's not the usual place we get chicken, but it's US Farm Raised Hatched", but I misinterpreted the her answer as a distributor name but then I realized even if I had a name, I probably couldn't figure out past that whether or not these chickens were pasture raised. If food labels are law, why doesn't this apply to where restaurants source their ingredients?
This, but unironically
https://youtu.be/G__PVLB8Nm4
also, allergies pride parade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhaUKnt1Zmw
Are food labels required to identify where they're sourced from? I don't think so?
The new QR codes (to replace the 2D UPCs) that manufacturers and merchants are moving to will contain source information and even which lot it came from.
But will it by ciphered by the manufacturer?
Tons of products already have all manner of information printed on them, but only the manufacturer can readily decrypt it.
This is a really good video explaining it. There is a good opportunity for someone more enterprising than I to stand up some infrastructure to support it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R32j6ZA3byI
That's bad ass
USDA inspected foods already carry markers with lot codes and factory identifiers. That is how food traceability works right now. Those values are pretty opaque to consumers though. The new 2D barcode rules seem to suggest that there will be a human readable value for the "Plant" that worked a food item, but I'm having difficulty cross referencing how this actually plays out. My reading is that the human readable value is only necessary for the next step in the chain, so a packaging company can partially obscure the human readable location value for the harvester, for example, though they will have a Plant code identifier of some sort.
If companies have a way of obscuring this info to end consumers while still meeting FDA obligations, they absolutely will, as they currently do for things like the information for companies who "Make" products right now, which are often holding companies meant to obscure business relationships.
Oh, and any human readable value will be obscured behind a QR code anyway, so all the humans who already do zero investigation to understand where their stuff comes from will continue to have no extra information.
Strict labeling laws around protected terms is an essential thing because so many people read nothing more than the packaging itself when shopping. All chicken lists "No hormones" as an advertisement despite that being law and no chicken sold will ever have those hormones.
I don't know what is legally required, but many in the industry want that. The better we can identify where something comes from the better we can contain issues if we find them later.
It’s not but they should list country of origin for the ingredients
In the US I also want to know State of Origin. Not all state food and agricultural department regulations and inspections are the same.
"Should" or "are required to?"
Regulations are minimal compared to what most consumers would want and expect.
https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/cool
Is that true though? Trump was very clear about what he would do, and was voted in.
And here we are.
Depends on the thing. Olive oil, for example, is required to list its country/countries of origin
For some things like meat, eggs, and milk: The USDA-inspected processing facility is required to be listed on the package. It is usually not very far-removed from the farm. It's coded, and these days it's usually printed near the sell-by date.
They (the USDA) publish cross-references betwixt the codes and the processing plants.
It's been kind of a pain in the ass when I've looked this stuff up in the past and I wish someone would take it upon themselves to make it easier, but it's do-able.
Restaurants don't even have to track and disclose what allergens their food contains.
It's crazy how nothing has been done in the US about this. I got an egg allergy in my late 20s, I had never thought about it before and now eating at restaurants is such a hassle. Even the delivery apps seem to have zero affordances for food allergies, at least with a restaurant you can get some assurance by asking the staff.
The places I worked over 15 years ago had extensive lists of allergens. They were mostly chain or corporate, I think the mom and pop places did a little guessing. I wouldn’t trust them.
You might like the UK. The place is wall to wall with allergen lists.
I’m very sorry to hear that, but I don’t think restaurants have to be forced to deal with that. The only thing I could support is “if revenue >X then allergen disclosure is mandatory”. I know personally multiple little shops that had to refuse customers, because that’s extra hassle and responsibility that they can’t afford to deal with.
They manage fine in Europe. It’s a cultural issue. If you can’t be arsed working through the minor administrative hassle once (how often do you change the menu..) to not kill your customers then you shouldn’t be in this business.
I would rather food vendors have the right to refuse service than be subjected to laws that effectively squeeze out smaller operators.
Is your perspective of restaurants, food trucks, sidewalk cafes, etc., in Europe that they're all large market providers, and not smaller operators?
In general, I think the barrier to entry to providing goods and services is now high enough that it discourages ever larger numbers of businesses from ever being started in the first place.
This is fact, with effort being put into resolving the issue: https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/bringing-do...
In my experience in NYC kitchens, I wouldn't trust most restaurants to actually be able to accommodate certain allergies. If it isn't stated clearly on the menu, I would rather be turned away than to have an inexperienced kitchen try to manage something they haven't done before. My experience is different now that I live in the EU.
Do you also think businesses shouldn’t need to be “forced” to deal with accessibility? Web devs shouldn’t be forced to deal with accessibility either right?
Web devs aren't forced to deal with accessibility either, unless they choose to work with or for an entity that requires it. No one is coming for your self-hosted blog because its not ADA-compliant.
But if you want every restaurant to be forced into labeling, you will see the small restaurants claim all the allergens are used and they cannot protect against cross contamination.
The FDA prohibits blanket labeling of allergens. They might be able to get away with it but it wouldn’t be legal.
This is a dumb conversation because the landscape of the discussion is one where the costs increase exponentially as the disability being serviced becomes more rare, and there isn't an objectively correct answer.
Maybe, but going by that 5% of the population have severe food allergies and only ~1% use wheelchairs, so if we accept wheelchair ramps etc. as being a worthwhile investment (which I do) then proper labeling and disclosure of allergens seems reasonable as well?
The labeling and disclosure is pretty much solved. The killer and the cost monster is the handling. That's why you see that "Processed in a facility that also processes XYZ" label on some foods.
I had an old coworker with a severe milk protein allergy. So bad that he would get a reaction if he (lip) kissed his wife after she drank milk or had ice cream. So eating out was basically impossible, because his food would pretty much need to be made in a totally separate kitchen to avoid any contamination risk.
So we are right back at my point. Do we force every restaurant to have a secondary allergen free kitchen so my coworker can eat there? Or does my coworker just deal with it and stick to vegan places (like he did)?
If your point is that cost doesn't perfectly match frequency, sure, it was off the cuff, but it doesn't change the underlying nature of "accommodating everyone".
Good. Restaurants are hectic to work in. Menus can change quickly, and many dishes are being cooked and prepped at once. Cross contamination chances are high, so if a restaurant MUST say an allergen is not in X,Y,Z they basically can't have it in their restaurant at all.
They manage here in the UK.
When entering, "any allergens or intolerances" is normally asked before you're sat down. They distinguish the two to decide whether a station clean is required or if they can just point you to the menu.
If it's not already clear on the menu, most medium/large chains then hand you a tablet letting you filter by almost anything.
Alternately, they could truthfully state what allergens are in literally all of their foods, and then people who are allergic to them can safely avoid them, which is what you're expecting them to do now except without actually saying which allergens they are.
In forty years I have very rarely seen menus change substantially.
If you are working with food you should know about allergies. It just comes with the territory. I’m baffled by how this is somehow too hard for US folks yet we manage fine.
Your menus don't change because of the administrative overhead. In the mid-sized American city where I live, menus change seasonally at nice restaurants and daily at really nice restaurants. Even fast food chains experiment with adding new items all the time.
If you're able to change the menu daily, print the menus, walk through the menu with your FOH, then you can have an idea on allergens. Especially in those "really nice" restaurants where the attention is on the provenance of the ingredients (and changing daily because it was what was at the market that day).
It's just yet another arena where the US likes to wring its hands and make excuses for why the US can't do what all manner of other countries manage to do without issue, from things like this to mass transit to Internet connectivity to gun control to ... we're just soooooo unique that solutions that work elsewhere couldn't possibly work here.
The rest of the world has been able to solve that issue
They have to in EU!
https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/campaign-2026/allergie...
Very, very poorly enforced and followed.
Depends on the country, as enforcing that falls to the agencies of the member states. At least here in Slovakia it is followed very strictly, but then our restaurant inspectors are notoriously business unfriendly.
That isn't for restaurants.
Yes it is
> For non-prepacked foods – such as those sold in restaurants, cafés or deli counters – allergen information must be provided.
The linked page is for packaging, which are unique to the EU.
The US has it's own allergen labeling guidelines, which seem similar, but I'm not going to 1:1 check. For restaurants it's mostly up to the states with the FDA providing guidance.
But you understand that if it were required, everyplace that doesn’t specify today, would slap allergens on the whole menu.
I wonder how high the ongoing implementation cost of that would be and how that would affect choice between small, specialized and large, integrated suppliers. Sysco can probably hand me a single sheet I can use without any extra work.
I think if you watch video of a massive meatpacking plant, you'll pretty quickly realize how hard it would be to track. At the commodity scale, basically no one in the supply chain other than the rancher seems to care where the meat comes from. And the brands (Tyson, Smithfield, etc.) only want consumers to care about the logo on the box.
Literally the canonical example of capitalism-as-meat-grinder.
Meat is already tracked to its origin. They can track a specific box to the farmer and supplier.
Anytime there would be a recall, they would include the lot number and manufacturer dates.
Source: I worked in meat packing and boutique butcher shops.
Edit: even things like ground beef from trimmings, we would write down every lot that went into it
Thanks for the correction. I think the issue here is that none of this information is public (like I can’t call the company and ask where lot 11956 came from), so it’s impossible to know as a consumer.
Tyson and Smithfield are the worst two brands in the USA that you can get any meat from.
Tyson in particular. Child labor? Had issues with that. Institutionally approved use of undocumented workers? Check.
And a willingness to throw both under the bus when OSHA comes knocking because they also have a large number of workplace safety incidents. Or when the workers complain about such conditions, a little call to DHS and all of a sudden ICE shows up for a raid to pick up 900 undocumented workers, but when a reporter asks officials about the fact that Tyson was giving them written instructions on how to stay under the radar for banking, tax, immigration purposes? "That's not something that's in the scope of our investigations here."
So you're saying that this type of regulation would force the food industry to start caring about whether their food comes from? That sounds like an argument in favor of it, not against it
trying to convert a massive meatpacking plan isn't step 1. it's too big a problem. that's top down. probably easier bottom up -- have a processing plant that only sources from ranchers that grass feed/finish, pasture raise, and slowly subsidize other ranchers to stop sending their product to massive meatpacking plants.
also the canonical example of a commodity. Basically the claim that all units are fully fungible.
"I went to restaurant last night and asked ..."
USDA Organic isn't perfect but it is, largely, the only meaningful information you can be given.
Everything else is weasel wording and subterfuge.
Seems like more bureaucracy that would make it even harder for new restaurants to get set up and the paperwork they would have to maintain in order to provide that information.
We have enough “restaurants” that fry an egg. We can do that ourselves. Running a proper business requires such formalities to not kill your customers. If knowing about your craft is too hard - allergies is a major part of it - then you shouldn’t be in this business.
Restaurants are one of the classic immigrant paths to upward mobility. We don't want to make that too hard.
By all means, get a license, food handler permit, etc. and know and practice good food safety, and buy ingredients from legitimate wholesalers. But at some point you don't have visibility into the supply chain and it's not reasonable to expect Joe's Taco Truck to know which specific farms produced their lettuce.
How hard would it be for them to know their immediate supplier?
I've thought about this a lot as it's effectively my idea of Origin Marks (not the same as the curvy OM/GI system), that are like trade marks but they serve the consumer rather than the companies.
Anyway, all companies have lists of what they buy and who from in their accounts - and their banks and suppliers can corroborate those details.
I think I'd provide limits for micro-businesses (1-2 employees, below the VAT threshold in UK), and maybe have limited reporting for SMEs too. Only listing all suppliers, say.
But for larger businesses, they should list the goods/services they use and the origin of all inputs to a product (including energy). Down to the factory, not a trade mark, the actual inputs.
Companies already keep all this information.
Capitalism supposedly optimises markets, but it can't do anything like that without full information. I mean the psychological manipulation of 'brand marketing' also opposes the supposed optimisations of capitalism too, but that's another story.
All this information is already maintained, it's just not exposed for the public.
What farm was my chicken produced on? Then I can look at that farm to see if they bought a tonne of penicillin, or a GM feed. I can look at the farm to see if they have outside access for the birds, say.
We can also readily graph essential businesses for food security, and new companies can easily find suppliers, B2B companies can find gaps and opportunities - the whole web of production can be mapped this way.
You can also spot corruption and loss. Consumers can avoid companies that use upstream suppliers they disprove of - like if a footwear company has a factory in an area known for human rights abuses, that's now public info, I can check it out if I want.
Anyway, restaurants already have to know the origin of their goods for pubic health purposes, codifying can just mean the suppliers send them an enhanced receipt that the restaurant catenates with others and uploads to the government, that can be done as part of the same process as finance reporting.
If you're buying chicken out the back of a van in an alley then you're going to have extra work; if you're just using standard supply chains it should all work pretty seamlessly.
Such are the wages of destroying trust in the supply chain.
When you elect visibly corrupt people who promised to destroy that trust upstream, you double the burden for everyone downstream from them.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
If we can't figure out a way as a society to honestly tell people what food is being sold in restaurants, maybe we shouldn't be starting new restaurants until we figure that out.
Knowing the sources of the food we eat is a very popular thing right now.
Isn't the capitalist way to help with this to build new restaurants that do openly provide the lineage for the food that they sell?
All of the consumers who are motivated by this information will then be free to reward these eateries with their business.
After that: Other restaurateurs will surely notice how unspeakably profitable these loyal consumers are and will begin to mimic the effort to try to capture a slice of the pie.
Ultimately, this snowballs into information being the norm instead of the rare exception. Everyone wins!
(Or, more likely: We'll broadly forget that we cared about any of this a few months from now, just as we have always done in the past, and the idea will die at the invisible hand of the free market.)
> Isn't the capitalist way to help with this to build new restaurants that do openly provide the lineage for the food that they sell?
Some people think that certain things that are not profitable are still worthwhile to society. For example, libraries and fire departments are not designed to be profitable at all, but they're established because at least some of us think they're beneficial to have despite that. A more fitting example might be the regulation on food production introduced early on in the 20th century; by your logic, a more capitalist way of solving the problem would have been to start different food companies that produced food in the way that the regulations required. I don't have any confidence that this would have ended up making much of a difference though, and I think the century since then has shown that the economy didn't fall over because of the lost profits from the regulation.
Please understand that I wrote the previous comment with a heavy dose of devil's advocacy. :)
In reality, I'm a huge fan of enabling people to find reliable information (if they want it) so they can do things like make what they feel are informed decisions (if they choose to do that).
This can happen with capitalism and food. I've known a nice lady for a very long time who has run a little food truck that serves only local, organic food.
She buys what she can directly from farmers and even the mass-produced products she uses are local-enough that she can ring up the owner on the phone and get good answers to whatever questions she has. If one of her customers wants to know where she gets her salad greens or the excellent sausage that she serves, she'll just tell them. There's no secrets in that kitchen.
It works for her in her tiny little market segment, and her usual clientele appreciate her efforts enough that this has been her sole occupation for over a decade.
But doing what she does in the way that she does it is a ton of work. And it apparently doesn't scale in a way that capitalism, alone, can support.
And by that, I mean: If the Arby's down the road from my house had enough interest in being informative in this way, then capitalist tenets suggest that they'd be doing it already. They are not.
But if they should then that means scary words like regulation come into play, and that never happens without a cost.
I'm OK with helping to pay for information to be available even though I myself don't necessarily care at all on any normal day what factory my chicken sandwich was raised in, or which particular farms that this batch of lettuce was sourced from.
And I'm OK with paying more for this because some people do care about stuff like that.
Except: Every now and then, like when there's a cyclospora outbreak, I care quite a lot about it myself. I love the cold, liquidy crunch of lettuce on a sandwich and I do miss it when it's gone.
And since shit happens (sometimes, literally) we'd collectively have a far easier time of adjusting our supply chains when it happens if tracking them was more of built-in function of food distribution. Since capitalism has so far not accomplished that, then perhaps it is time to move on to other methods.
Count me in.