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Checklist #8: Do not allow your food allergic child to eat bakery products that aren't packaged and labeled according to FALCPA.
Now you'll recall that FALCPA is the law
that spells out exactly what food manufacturers have to disclose to you so that you can protect yourself
if you have food allergies. Now, FALCPA does not apply to restaurants or bakeries. It only applies to food that is packaged and labeled
and sold in its packaging.
So a bakery is basically exempt from FALCPA. Now there's really nothing wrong with that
if you're a regular consumer: you know if you're going to go into a bakery you're going to eat something that's got butter and sugar and
nuts and whatever else in it. But if you're a food allergic consumer you have to know EXACTLY what is in the food that you're eating. But
there is no way to know what is in the food that you're eating at a bakery if it doesn't have a label.
There are simply too many ways that an accident can happen in a bakery.
So let's just take a quick example. Let's say that your child has a peanut allergy, and you would like to go into the neighborhood bakery
and get a sugar cookie for your child. Seems like a perfectly safe thing to do, doesn't it?
It's not. I'm so sorry. It's not. The rules have changed for you now, now that you have a food allergic child. Here's what could happen. At a bakery
the kitchen is used to bake every single thing that you see in the cabinets.
Let's say that on Tuesday the bakery baked peanut butter cookies and sugar cookies, and they baked the peanut butter cookies right before they baked
the sugar cookies. Now if they didn't completely clear
the, their commercial kitchen, their baking area, of every bit of residue from the peanut butter cookies, there could be what the FDA
calls cross contamination, or what we call exposure to peanuts.
Here's another example. Let's say that they did completely disinfect the kitchen.
Let's say, even better, that they baked the sugar cookies first. Great!
Now, how did they get in the cabinet? How did they get in the display cabinet? Did they put the peanut butter cookies in first and then reach for the sugar
cookies with the same gloves and then put the sugar cookies in the cabinet? OK, now your sugar cookie has been exposed to peanuts.
If I need to go on let me go one step further. Let's say that when they restock the sugar cookies
they accidentally put them where they put the peanut butter cookies earlier that day.
One more example. Let's say the customer right before you bought a peanut butter cookie, bought a chocolate chip cookie,
bought an oatmeal walnut raisin cookie,
had some kind of cookie that your child was allergic to. And then, the bakery got really busy, and they forgot to change their gloves
before they served your child the sugar cookie. Aahhhhhh!!!! So the sugar cookie now has been exposed to walnuts and
peanuts and whatever else I just listed. So you can see the problem. We're not trying to scare you, we're just saying, this is the way it is.
bakeries are busy places, restaurants are busy places; accidents
happen. And so you need to make sure that you're either baking things for your child at home,
which is perfectly safe as long as you have read the ingredient labels and made sure that each ingredient is safe for
your child. Perfectly fine to do that. Or you need to shop from a bakery that
can tell you on their label that the food is safe for your child. So
please just be aware of this.
There is a bright side to all this: this is the reason for our existence. This is the main reason we decided to turn
our own recipes into our own company. So, if you feel like not baking one day,
just make sure you check out our web site at EggFreeEpicurean.com (peanut-free and tree nut-free too).
Thank you.