No Allergen Facility Statement, What Does This Mean

[VHill33]

Hi,

I just bought some Trader Joes Beef Chili. There are no gluten ingredients listed, but it does not have a statement that it is gluten free. I'm also worried because normally most products will say "made on equipment shared with..." or, "made in a facility that processes wheat etc." It does not have this statement. Should I just take that to mean that this is the only product made in the facility? I have an email in to Trader Joes... will see what they make of it.

Anyone have advice or comments on this one?

Vanessa

[Lisa]

Hi,

I just bought some Trader Joes Beef Chili. There are no gluten ingredients listed, but it does not have a statement that it is gluten free. I'm also worried because normally most products will say "made on equipment shared with..." or, "made in a facility that processes wheat etc." It does not have this statement. Should I just take that to mean that this is the only product made in the facility? I have an email in to Trader Joes... will see what they make of it.

Anyone have advice or comments on this one?

Vanessa

Open Original Shared Link

8. What are the Allergen Labeling Standards for Trader Joe's Private Label Products?

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).

Want to learn more about food allergies? Check out The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network at www.foodallergy.org.

The highlighted (from me) indicates that there is no guarantee of non-cross contact/contamination. That's the best they can do without testing each and every product.

Generally, it's a pretty good disclosure.