Warning: this blog contains blog posts.
In these health-conscious times food companies are increasingly keen to warn consumers if ingredients may cause allergic reactions.
But one firm has gone a step further by advising shoppers that its boxes of eggs contain…egg.
The Happy Egg Company’s six-pack of eggs – which features the company’s name and is decorated with a picture of an egg and a cartoon chicken – contains the message ‘allergy advice: contains egg’ inside the lid of the boxes.
A spokesman said: ‘Some retailers insist on this information within their packs as part of a due diligence procedure. Any products deemed as potentially allergenic are included in this. A crazy world, but occasionally we have to do silly things to cover ourselves.’
Later The Happy Egg Company admitted it had chosen to print the advice of its own volition – after the supermarkets involved said they only demand producers comply with the law – adding: ‘We have to state the obvious to cover all eventualities.’
…Lindsay McManus, from charity Allergy UK, said: ‘It does seem silly but they’re being extra-careful and making absolutely sure they’re covered.’
No, seriously. And there’s even a photo of the carton at the .
Things like this are so stupid not only because of the obviousness, but to me, also because of the inconsistency. If you’re going to be this ridiculous, why not be so with things that matter much more and affect a lot more people?
For example, why don’t cars have warning labels on them? Warning: You might crash and DIE.
(That’s for . And thanks to Mrs. Hill, I continue to discover the wonders of the , such as this “breaking news builder” over at I Can Has Cheezburger.)
no, no! Thanks to Mrs Hill!!
[Doh!! I KNEW it when I typed it. Fixed! Durrrr - Rachel]
January 26th, 2009 at 8:49 amESTPS simply Beautiful, Rachel. I’ll be checking this picture often today just to laff and laff.
PPS I haven’t been able to get the advanced builder stuff to work. When I hit the save button, nothing shows up for me to embed. I one in the breaking news yesterday about O! and pixie dust, but I couldn’t get it to go.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:53 amESTPPPS I thought cars do have that sort of warning. Have your read the manuals that come with cars nowadays? They tell you how to drive well with the tranction/stability control on, then tell you how to turn it off, but don’t turn it off, or else you’ll die!!
January 26th, 2009 at 8:55 amESTThis disclosure won’t be sufficient. Some lawyer will sue anyway. Why do we have such complicated regulations? Because lawyers always finds a flaw, so the rules get changed.
Its the Regulatory Dialectic
January 26th, 2009 at 9:04 amESTWhat does TVN stand for? The Vapors Network?
January 26th, 2009 at 9:07 amESTOK, I agree that the label stating that a carton of eggs contain eggs seems like a no-brainer. However I have a daughter who is very sensitive to wheat/gluten and dairy. If she eats even a little of these foods, she will have very nasty stomach cramps! When we discovered her problem, we used to spend what seemed like hours reading food labels in the grocery store. We found that almost every packaged food contains some type of gluten, and the packages are not always clearly marked. The use of the allergy warning labels has been helpful to us.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:46 amESTQuite a few years back, I bought a showerhead. Inside the package was a note that it might expose me to dangerous chemicals. I assume that those dangerous chemicals included dihydrogen oxide.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:54 amESTI agree with Karma in that having warning labels on things are appropriate when something you’re allergic to, or causes you other types of distress, isn’t apparent or obvious in the product. I’m diabetic, and my biggest problem isn’t the sugar in foods, it’s the complex carbs (those things blow my bloodsugar all to conniptions), so I have to be especially wary of carbs minus fiber times complex carbs divided by the square root of the second-phase apogee of the star Beta- when I read labels. (Okay, that was hyperbole). But when you’ve got to label an egg carton, with a picture of an egg on it, as containing eggs? This isn’t simply because people are stupid and too in a rush to actually pay attention to what they’re buying … it’s because people are litigious (that means willing to sue at the drop of a hat, for all youse gun-clingin hillbillies out dere).
January 26th, 2009 at 9:58 amESTGoodKarma - you have my sympathy for your daughter’s troubles. Celiac disease is quite a challenge. It’s not like the food companies make stuff like “Gluten-O’s.”
This stuff’s been going on . We’re choked with lawyers who need ways to occupy their time, but there are only 535 available spots in Congress. That leaves several tens of thousands of excess that we’re forced to deal with.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:01 amESTI think the point is that while labeling food packages of the content is all well and good, something as simple as an egg carton filled with eggs with a warning that it contains eggs is beyond ridiculous.
Edit Er….what The Watcher already said. (Next time I’ll refresh before responding to a comment on a page I’ve had open for close to half an hour while browsing other parts of the internet. Der.)
January 26th, 2009 at 10:18 amESTI often used to wonder what there was more of in SoCal: lawyers or real estate agents? It seemed like every week there was a new and stupider lawsuit being filed.
The AM guys in L.A. had on one of the warning label-lawyers for a solvent company on, and he said he’d tried a number of versions of warning against snorting the product but they’d continue to get sued when little Johnny got brain damage.
He finally hit on the right one:
That one worked rather well.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:22 amESTI once bought a box of peanut butter cookies. The label said: “Warning: may contain peanuts”
My response: Damn, I HOPE so.
****
On the other end of the spectrum - as another poster noted - is the “stealth” use of ingredients, which necessitate careful label warning. I do not tolerate sorbitol (a fake sweetener that is also sometimes used by euro-companies as a “humectant” in foods). It is in stuff you wouldn’t expect it to be in. I’ve just learned that if I start having mystery stomach pain, to start looking over everything I’ve eaten in the past couple days.
The food companies are, at times, similarly lax about labeling food with aspartame in it - which could pose a REAL health danger to a small segment of the population (people with PKU). The stuff gives me headaches, so it pisses me off that sometimes I will buy something and get it home just to note that in the tiny ingredients list type, they’ve put in aspartame for some damn reason. (And these are NOT products boasting “Sugar Free” or “A DIET DE-LITE” on the label)
I don’t get it - on one hand, they’re all too happy to inform people that peanut butter contains peanuts, on the other, they make it harder for consumers to know what synthetic compounds have been added to foods…
January 26th, 2009 at 10:28 amESTThis is nothing new. I have a package a peanuts I got on Southwest Airlines that has the waring “WARNING: Processed in a facility that processes nuts”.
Gee, I think I could have figured that out myself!
January 26th, 2009 at 10:28 amESTRicki beat me to it!
January 26th, 2009 at 10:30 amESTno, no, NO! Thanks to maya, who noticed the thought bubble and went to investigate! (Mrs. Hill having failed to realize that she was inadvertently Holding Out — d’oh!)
So, kudos to maya for her keen observation, and “YeeHAW!” for Rachel’s making hay while the Sunshine’s available!
January 26th, 2009 at 10:30 amESTI did an a few weeks ago. Mine was in regards to nuts, but I think a lot of these “allergy issues” fall into the same category.
I love this quote.
Of the roughly 3.3 million Americans who have nut allergies, about 150 die from allergy-related causes each year. Compare those figures to the 100 people who are killed yearly by lightning, 45,000 who die in car crashes, and 1,300 killed in gun accidents. As a society, Christakis says, our priorities have been seriously skewed, and it’s largely a result of fear. “My interest is in understanding [the reaction to nut allergies] as a spread of anxiety,” he says.
Who spreads the anxiety? The doctors who are getting sick of being sued every time something goes wrong. The mother’s….. Who, I will just leave it there so that I don’t offend.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:38 amESTPersonally, I don’t like free-range eggs.
They’re runny.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:49 amESTIt all depends on how long you keep them in your fridge before you cook them. Besides, I thought raw eggs were supposed to be runny.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:56 amEST:p
I agree that I’d like to see ingredients listed fully — i.e., no generic references to “other flavorings,” or “spices”! — but surely we can vote with our pocket books rather than having to legislate such things?
My other bugaboo is “Country of Origin” labeling. I’m very picky about where certain foods — — come from. If the companies were not required to include that information on the label, I’d base my purchases on whether they volunteered the information. When enough people do that, market forces drive the actions of the producers. (But I’m a bitter clinger, so what the Hell do I know!)
Can we add demagoguing politicians and hysterical activists to that list? Remember the
January 26th, 2009 at 10:56 amESTOnly whilst freely ranging!
January 26th, 2009 at 11:00 amESTAnd another thing — I might never have noticed the Advanced builder (which I actually used and ), had it not been for the genius of Tully and 14 Karat (dammit, woman, where are you?), who appear to have been using it for quite some time!
January 26th, 2009 at 11:35 amESTMy Corolla Owner’s Manual contains ‘…death or serious injury…’ more times than I can count.
They even caution adjusting the position of the rear view mirror as it may cause an accident resulting in death or serious injury.
Boy, how many times have I avoided death or serious over the years and didn’t even know it!
Dad
January 26th, 2009 at 12:37 pmESTUm…that dog is NOT ‘yawning’. She’s stretching her jaws in preparation for swallowing you whole. I seen snakes do ‘at when I’z out clingin to mah gunz and such.
January 26th, 2009 at 1:56 pmESTWhile listening to G. Gordon Liddy several years ago, a guy called in about this subject. His contention? While the label warns that the filling of the toaster pastry may be hot, it says nothing about the frosting being hot. Apparently he didn’t understand that the warning was so people would realize that the inside may still be hot even after the outside has cooled somewhat, and that the company expected people to realize that the outside would be hot if the pastry were toasted.
January 26th, 2009 at 1:59 pmESTSheesh, for Petey R’s sake!
January 26th, 2009 at 2:11 pmESTI can empathize with the hidden ingredient problem. These days, it is easier to sort things out, but unless the “Happy Egg” is made by Cadbury this is ridiculous.
Also, yay for whomever got Rachel rooting around the advanced builder’s shelves to find today’s breaking news! LOL funny, as usual!
Also,II, in my “lurker” days (gawd, that sounds so criminal), I enjoyed reading the comments of 14 Karat. I have often wondered why they stopped.
[Many have asked that question and I periodically pop in to answer it: she's had some personal troubles and is spending her time and energy dealing with them. I emailed her in a panic months ago to ask where she was because I couldn't bear the thought that she'd just grown bored with all us 'tards around here. Heh. If she ever comes back, I say we take up a petition to force her to create a blog of her own because truth is, it would be better than mine.
- Rachel]
January 26th, 2009 at 2:45 pmESTMy favorite is on the package of mixed nuts - Item may contain nuts.
Yes, I am serious. I believe it was the Planter’s variety.
I have an Aunt and a good friend that have allergies to Gluten. And reactions can be horrible. I am allergic to shellfish and it could kill me. I agree products need to be labeled, but I also think common sense needs to come back in the world.
January 26th, 2009 at 4:51 pmESTRachel, thanks for solving the 14 karat mystery for me/us. I hope her storms pass, soon.
“If she ever comes back, I say we take up a petition to force her to create a blog of her own….”
Yes, to the petition.
“because truth is, it would be better than mine. :)”
That’s your opinion!
January 26th, 2009 at 5:32 pmESTAre you SURE she’s just yawning? She looks vicious.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:59 pmESTNothing new under the sun. Several years back my mom gave a pack of Delta peanuts to my daughter that she’d gotten on her flight. The package said “may contain nuts.” No shit.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:23 pmESTThe UK is run by retards. I saw an article some months back where a Brit was referring to a black British athlete. The term used? African-American. For a British citizen.
Fuck. I feel like unloading a 50-round clip right now.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:38 pmESTI worked in a supermarket deli when I was in college. The meat/cheese slicer said “Caution: Blade is sharp” Ya think?! Makes me think of Bill Engvall’s “Here’s Your (stupid) sign” shtick.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:55 pmESTI thought Sunny was evilly laughing at the line above her head:
For example, why don’t cars have warning labels on them? Warning: You might crash and DIE.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:42 pmESTphysics geek,
January 27th, 2009 at 12:08 amESTI can see how a PC-bound American might engage in that silliness (), but for a Brit to do it is just bizarre!
Aren’t all of these warning labels messing with natural selection trying to strengthen the heard?
I have a hammer and the label reads “striking self in head may cause injury”. If you need to be told that then you need to be yanked out of the gene pool.
January 27th, 2009 at 7:59 amEST