I’m of two minds about a recent food recall order from the US FDA. On a practical level, recalling butter because the label doesn’t say ‘Contains Milk’ just seems wasteful and silly. And I think, insulting to consumers… Or is it?
It’s hard not to roll your eyes with amazement, or chuckle and shake your head in disbelief when you hear that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week asked COSTCO to voluntarily recall 80,000 lb. / 36, 363 kg of its store-brand Kirkland brand butter for a minor labelling infraction.
First, the details…
It’s only fair – and prudent – that we first go over the details of the recall. It’s a state-wide affair affecting Texas COSTCOs. The retailer has voluntarily recalled both salted and unsalted butter sup-plied by Continental Dairy Facilities Southwest LLC. The 16 oz. / 1 lb. boxes, each containing 4 x 4 oz. sticks of the yellow gold, don’t carry a mandatory allergen alert notice.
The, “[b]utter lists cream, but may be missing the Contains Milk statement,” the FDA explains. The recall lists six lots of products that have ‘Best Before’ dates of Feb. 22, 2025 to March 29, 2025.
Allergens no joke
Of course, allergens in our food are no joke. And care must be taken to ensure consumers are notified of any potential allergy-triggering substances in any foods they may buy. Milk/dairy allergies can be extremely serious – even deadly, depending on how sensitive a sufferer is.
But do manufacturers and retailers really have to assume consumers don’t know that butter is made from milk?
It appears so. And technically speaking , the laws and regulations governing recalls demand that all products containing allergens be clearly labelled as such.
Failing education system?
Nevertheless, the notion that some folks don’t know where butter comes from is alarming. We’ve all heard the jokes about city-raised elementary school-age kids who think ‘milk comes from the store’. That’s cute, and mostly harmless.
But we’re in the midst of an era in which our climate is changing at a furious rate. And this is precip-itating equally rapid changes across our whole agri-food system. It’s critical that everyone under-stand how our food supply chain works. And how the foods we eat effect our health and well being, as our food choices evolve.
At minimum, it’s crucial for folks to know, for instance, that some foods which come from animal and other unsustainable sources are ultimately going to disappear.
My take
It looks at first glance that the recall is overkill, pure and simple. But when you stop to consider WHY the FDA ordered the recall, it makes you think. Hard.
First… I wonder if Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new HHS administration would have issued a recall order for the Kirkland butter had it already been in charge? We’ll never know.
But more to the point, does the abundance of caution exercised by the FDA indicate a greater, more pervasive problem? There’s a real, troubling issue with unequal educational systems from state to state. One fundamental factor behind this problem is that some sparsely-populated areas already can’t afford to pay enough adequately-trained teachers a living wage. And many states rely on the federal government to transfer cash from federal sources to them to help fund any kind of public education system at all.
Donald Trump has chosen his pals Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami to run a new Department of Government Efficiency. They’re saying they’ll gut or completely dissolve some government depart-ments and agencies – including the Department of Education – to save money. They couldn’t have picked a worse time to cut education funding off at its knees…
~ Maggie J.