Reality check (October 2012): Imperfect labeling in Trader Joe's. For non-Trader Joe's brands, you must contact the manufacturer. For Trader Joe's house brand: they use many manufacturers. They impose their GMP's on those sub-vendors for the house brand, and supposedly all follow the GMP's but only some of them actually have their procedures "certified" to meet some allergen safety requirement (I dont know what requirement yet). Unfortunately, their sub-vendors do not uniformly label for potential cross contamination. However, Trader Joe's does require them to disclose to Trader Joe's (even if not on their label) whether the facility handles any of the top 8 allergens, and whether the item is manufactured on shared equipment, and if on shared equipment whether their cleaning procedures meet certified standards. Trader Joe's has a hotline phone number where you can learn the manufacturing/handling environment risks of any of their products.
What are the Allergen Labeling Standards for Trader Joe's Private Label Products? From the TJ website as of 6/4/12:
"As with all health and safety related issues, we take food allergy concerns very seriously. We strive to ensure that all of our Trader Joe's brand products are labeled with reliable, accurate, and easy to read ingredient statements.
Trader Joe's strictly adheres to all Federal labeling guidelines. You can be assured that if any of the top eight allergens (milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, wheat and soy) are present in our private label products, they will be clearly labeled in familiar terms in our ingredient statements [e.g. casein (milk)]. You can also be certain that if "natural flavors" or "spices" contain any components that are allergens or are derived from allergens, they will be listed separately within the ingredient statement.
At our customers' request, we are including a "Contains" statement on most of our labels. This statement is an at-a-glance tool where Top 8 allergens present in the ingredients are clearly identified. What this statement doesn't include (there is only so much room on the label) is that all Trader Joe's private label suppliers follow Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP's). We work closely with all of the companies that manufacture our products and require that they are vigilant about minimizing and monitoring any potential cross contamination risk. Some of the steps taken to prevent cross contamination include education and training of employees about allergens, careful labeling and segregation of allergen ingredients, cleaning of lines between production runs and stringent scheduling of product runs. Manufacturers may even use alternate days to process products that contain allergens from those products that do not.
We provide you with all of this information so you can feel confident that you are making informed buying decisions. We want you to feel safe, comfortable and thrilled by with the food choices you are making.
As manufacturers and ingredients can change, we strongly encourage our customers to read ingredient information every time they buy a Trader Joe's brand product (or any product, for that matter)."
Fyi, TJ's is 90% accurate with labeling. There are items that contain cashews in the ingredient but does not state "contains tree nuts" at the end of the ingredient list. i believe this is on an frozen chicken indian dish. there's also items with egg in the ingredients but fails to make the statement at the end of the ingredient list.
ReplyDeleteanother thing that i question is the speculoos filled chocolate bar. the speculoos in a jar has an allergy statement at the end -'may contain tree nuts' but in the chocolate bar it does not. often foods are made in different facilities so it's quite possible it's safe from tree nuts.
Trader Joes lists when products "contain" allergens, but its policy for "may contain" is inconsistent at best. I just want to be sure you are aware that it is completely voluntary that a company have "may contain" on a package under the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act. Secondly, there have been MANY recalls from Traders Joes because of undeclared allergens. Be careful!
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