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I went to restaurant last night and asked where the chicken was sourced from and their response was "it's not the usual place we get chicken, but it's US Farm R
by sharps_xp 2mo ago
I went to restaurant last night and asked where the chicken was sourced from and their response was "it's not the usual place we get chicken, but it's US Farm Raised Hatched", but I misinterpreted the her answer as a distributor name but then I realized even if I had a name, I probably couldn't figure out past that whether or not these chickens were pasture raised. If food labels are law, why doesn't this apply to where restaurants source their ingredients?
- estearum 2mo agoAre food labels required to identify where they're sourced from? I don't think so?
- bushbaba 2mo agoIt’s not but they should list country of origin for the ingredients
- pc86 2mo ago"Should" or "are required to?"
- tyre 2mo agoDepends on the thing. Olive oil, for example, is required to list its country/countries of origin
- sgc 2mo agoRegulations are minimal compared to what most consumers would want and expect. https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/cool https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/cool
- lostlogin 2mo agoIs that true though? Trump was very clear about what he would do, and was voted in. And here we are.
- ssl-3 2mo agoFor some things like meat, eggs, and milk: The USDA-inspected processing facility is required to be listed on the package. It is usually not very far-removed from the farm. It's coded, and these days it's usually printed near the sell-by date. They (the USDA) publish cross-references betwixt the codes and the processing plants. It's been kind of a pain in the ass when I've looked this stuff up in the past and I wish someone would take it upon themselves to make it easier, but it's do-able.
- sgc 2mo agoIn the US I also want to know State of Origin. Not all state food and agricultural department regulations and inspections are the same.
- ndsipa_pomu 2mo agoThat sounds like a bad idea if produce can be freely sold across state lines even when it doesn't meet the standards required in a particular state. It's the right conditions to promote a race to the bottom with the states that have the most lax regulations would be more attractive to food companies with the worst standards (production that meets high standards wouldn't benefit from the extra quality unless they can market that specifically).
- estearum 2mo agoAren't you describing the current state of affairs, and GP's suggestion would enable the ideal state (i.e. food products can compete on implied quality based on state of origin)?
- ndsipa_pomu 2mo agoYou're right, I thought I was replying to a different comment somehow.
- stronglikedan 2mo agoThe new QR codes (to replace the 2D UPCs) that manufacturers and merchants are moving to will contain source information and even which lot it came from.
- estearum 2mo agoThat's bad ass
- zikduruqe 2mo agoThis is a really good video explaining it. There is a good opportunity for someone more enterprising than I to stand up some infrastructure to support it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R32j6ZA3byI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R32j6ZA3byI
- WarmWash 2mo agoBut will it by ciphered by the manufacturer? Tons of products already have all manner of information printed on them, but only the manufacturer can readily decrypt it.
- mrguyorama 2mo agoUSDA inspected foods already carry markers with lot codes and factory identifiers. That is how food traceability works right now. Those values are pretty opaque to consumers though. The new 2D barcode rules seem to suggest that there will be a human readable value for the "Plant" that worked a food item, but I'm having difficulty cross referencing how this actually plays out. My reading is that the human readable value is only necessary for the next step in the chain, so a packaging company can partially obscure the human readable location value for the harvester, for example, though they will have a Plant code identifier of some sort. If companies have a way of obscuring this info to end consumers while still meeting FDA obligations, they absolutely will, as they currently do for things like the information for companies who "Make" products right now, which are often holding companies meant to obscure business relationships. Oh, and any human readable value will be obscured behind a QR code anyway, so all the humans who already do zero investigation to understand where their stuff comes from will continue to have no extra information. Strict labeling laws around protected terms is an essential thing because so many people read nothing more than the packaging itself when shopping. All chicken lists "No hormones" as an advertisement despite that being law and no chicken sold will ever have those hormones.
- bluGill 2mo agoI don't know what is legally required, but many in the industry want that. The better we can identify where something comes from the better we can contain issues if we find them later.
- ajmurmann 2mo agoI wonder how high the ongoing implementation cost of that would be and how that would affect choice between small, specialized and large, integrated suppliers. Sysco can probably hand me a single sheet I can use without any extra work.
- jmole 2mo agoI think if you watch video of a massive meatpacking plant, you'll pretty quickly realize how hard it would be to track. At the commodity scale, basically no one in the supply chain other than the rancher seems to care where the meat comes from. And the brands (Tyson, Smithfield, etc.) only want consumers to care about the logo on the box. Literally the canonical example of capitalism-as-meat-grinder.
- saghm 2mo agoSo you're saying that this type of regulation would force the food industry to start caring about whether their food comes from? That sounds like an argument in favor of it, not against it
- Danox 2mo agoTyson and Smithfield are the worst two brands in the USA that you can get any meat from.
- FireBeyond 2mo agoTyson in particular. Child labor? Had issues with that. Institutionally approved use of undocumented workers? Check. And a willingness to throw both under the bus when OSHA comes knocking because they also have a large number of workplace safety incidents. Or when the workers complain about such conditions, a little call to DHS and all of a sudden ICE shows up for a raid to pick up 900 undocumented workers, but when a reporter asks officials about the fact that Tyson was giving them written instructions on how to stay under the radar for banking, tax, immigration purposes? "That's not something that's in the scope of our investigations here."
- 2mo ago
- dyauspitr 2mo agoSeems like more bureaucracy that would make it even harder for new restaurants to get set up and the paperwork they would have to maintain in order to provide that information.
- vkou 2mo agoSuch are the wages of destroying trust in the supply chain. When you elect visibly corrupt people who promised to destroy that trust upstream, you double the burden for everyone downstream from them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- inigyou 2mo agoHow hard would it be for them to know their immediate supplier?
- dyauspitr 2mo agoJust throw it on the pile of 1000 other things that a small business has to keep up with with minimal resources and small margins when all they really absolutely need to adhere to is hygiene. Everything else is a nice to have and shouldn’t be a requirement.
- inigyou 2mo agoNo, I have to push back on this. It should actually be illegal not to know where you're buying ingredients from.
- pbhjpbhj 2mo agoI've thought about this a lot as it's effectively my idea of Origin Marks (not the same as the curvy OM/GI system), that are like trade marks but they serve the consumer rather than the companies. Anyway, all companies have lists of what they buy and who from in their accounts - and their banks and suppliers can corroborate those details. I think I'd provide limits for micro-businesses (1-2 employees, below the VAT threshold in UK), and maybe have limited reporting for SMEs too. Only listing all suppliers, say. But for larger businesses, they should list the goods/services they use and the origin of all inputs to a product (including energy). Down to the factory, not a trade mark, the actual inputs. Companies already keep all this information. Capitalism supposedly optimises markets, but it can't do anything like that without full information. I mean the psychological manipulation of 'brand marketing' also opposes the supposed optimisations of capitalism too, but that's another story. All this information is already maintained, it's just not exposed for the public. What farm was my chicken produced on? Then I can look at that farm to see if they bought a tonne of penicillin, or a GM feed. I can look at the farm to see if they have outside access for the birds, say. We can also readily graph essential businesses for food security, and new companies can easily find suppliers, B2B companies can find gaps and opportunities - the whole web of production can be mapped this way. You can also spot corruption and loss. Consumers can avoid companies that use upstream suppliers they disprove of - like if a footwear company has a factory in an area known for human rights abuses, that's now public info, I can check it out if I want. Anyway, restaurants already have to know the origin of their goods for pubic health purposes, codifying can just mean the suppliers send them an enhanced receipt that the restaurant catenates with others and uploads to the government, that can be done as part of the same process as finance reporting. If you're buying chicken out the back of a van in an alley then you're going to have extra work; if you're just using standard supply chains it should all work pretty seamlessly.
- maxsilver 2mo agoThis, but unironically https://youtu.be/G__PVLB8Nm4 https://youtu.be/G__PVLB8Nm4
- fsckboy 2mo agoalso, allergies pride parade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhaUKnt1Zmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhaUKnt1Zmw
- Miner49er 2mo agoRestaurants don't even have to track and disclose what allergens their food contains.
- M95D 2mo agoThey have to in EU! https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/campaign-2026/allergies_en https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/campaign-2026/allergie...
- rafram 2mo agoVery, very poorly enforced and followed.
- tpm 2mo agoDepends on the country, as enforcing that falls to the agencies of the member states. At least here in Slovakia it is followed very strictly, but then our restaurant inspectors are notoriously business unfriendly.
- WarmWash 2mo agoThat isn't for restaurants.
- morsch 2mo agoYes it is > For non-prepacked foods – such as those sold in restaurants, cafés or deli counters – allergen information must be provided.
- WarmWash 2mo agoThe linked page is for packaging, which are unique to the EU. The US has it's own allergen labeling guidelines, which seem similar, but I'm not going to 1:1 check. For restaurants it's mostly up to the states with the FDA providing guidance.
- 2mo ago
- rsync 2mo ago"I went to restaurant last night and asked ..." USDA Organic isn't perfect but it is, largely, the only meaningful information you can be given. Everything else is weasel wording and subterfuge.