Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Campino - Your Info Placement Sucks

Last week, I was mortified to find out that we had a potentially dangerous snack easily accessible to DJ in our house - Campino Yogurt Gummies. I had opened the package more than a month ago, with the remainder chip-clipped and sitting in the cupboard, right beside DJ's snack basket. Several times in the last couple of weeks, he had grabbed them, and asked for one. Each time, I said no and simply put them back.

Then, last week, my mother and father-in-law baby-sat for the day. DJ wasn't feeling well, and neither my husband or I were in a position to take another day off. Again, DJ tried his luck with the candies, and asked Grandma for one. Luckily, she read the label and caught what both of us had previously missed; a warning that the candies could contain peanuts, hazelnuts and almonds.

I distinctly remember reading the label when I pulled the candy out of my Christmas stocking; I also remember my husband saying it was challenging to find peanut and nut free treats to fill it with.

Yikes. So how did this product end up in our house with two people that supposedly read every label every time? Some mighty strange allergy info placement.

While I'm not abdicating either of us from responsibility (and believe me, we both felt terrible about it) Campino's placement of the warning was so odd, I'm not that surprised neither of us saw it. The product ingredients were listed in English on the back of the package on the left-hand side. The French ingredients were listed immediately below. Neither language included an allergy warning immediately below the listed ingredients, where you would normally find it. Instead, the allergy warning was on the right-hand side of the package, underneath a product description. I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but I'm pretty sure the warning was in English only. I'll double check and report back later.

This is obviously a lesson for both of us. I look at the ingredients list and immediately below for any allergy warnings. I don't examine the whole package. From now on I will.

In the meantime, I will be wary of any candies made by the family company, Stork. http://www.storck.ca/en/index.php.

Has anybody else seen products with labelling like this, where the allergy information is located in a different spot than the ingredients?

Thanks goodness DJ didn't actually have any of them and a shout out to my mother-in-law for not assuming everything in our house was safe and reading the label. If not, DJ may have inadvertently suffered a potentially dangerous reaction.

2 comments:

  1. IT WAS UNDER THE NUTRITION FACTS. usually thats the first place people look when checking out a new product ie food. im shocked you missed it actually. do you even read the nutritiom facts of food??

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  2. Hi Anonymous...

    Maybe it's you that doesn't - or can't - read. I clearly said the information was included, but not where it regularly is, directly under the ingredients. I double-checked - and its listed under the nutritional information box - not with the ingredients.

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