Chocolate madness

Onhell

Onhell

Infinite Dreamer
So I have a very cool boss that puts out bite-sized Three Musketeers, Milky Ways and Snickers. Now some of you may have read my now defunct argument as to which one to buy to literally get more bang for your buck... Once again I turn to these three chocolates to illustrate a different problem.

As I was chewing these gifts from god I began to look over their wrappers. Snicker's said:

Contains Peanuts, soy, milk and egg products. May contain almonds...
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Wait, what? MAY contain almonds? as in, you don't know what exactly goes into these things? I read Milky Way's and Three Musketeers' wrapper:

Allergy Information: May contain peanuts
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There it was again! "may contain?" you fucking kidding me? Then I started thinking, why would two of the non peanut products may contain peanuts, but not almonds yet the peanut product that obviously does contain peanut may contain almonds... They are all Mars Inc. products, does Mars Inc. make an almond chocolate bar? Yes! The Mars bar now known as the Snickers Almond Bar. Thus it is only obvious that they make all four bars in the same factory and the production line of Three Musketeers and Milky Way is nearby the Snickers one (hence the peanut that MAY, accidentally, find it's way into their mix), but they are not in the proximity of the Snickers Almond bar like the regular Snickers bar apparently is. THE END

Yes I'm bored if you couldn't tell :D
 
Having actually worked for two food manufacturers (Bigelow Tea previously, Sara Lee now), I strongly suspect that Onhell's analysis is slightly wrong.

In all likelihood, there are not separate production lines for the different candy bars. There is only one production line. And the trace amounts of peanut or almond which wind up in the 'wrong' product are not contamination from a different 'nearby' line - they are the oils from the nuts which didn't get cleaned off properly when the line was changing products.

So let's say they configure the line for Snickers and do a run of Snickers bar. Next up is Three Musketeers. The equipment is cleaned and they do the next product. And in all likelihood, that cleaning was thorough. But in some cases, a random drop of peanut oil may get missed. However, for people with allergies, all it takes is a tiny part of that drop to become deathly ill. So Mars Inc. is just trying to cover their ass in case that happens.

But the main point is: one production line, not multiple.

What could be interesting is their errors. Every company makes mistakes which you never see. Maybe they forget to take the peanuts out of the line before they run Three Musketeers, and you get Three Musketeers With Peanuts. And they likely produce hundreds of those before the error is noticed and corrected. Employees take home a few weird candy bars and the rest go in the trash.

I wonder what their factory setup is like - horizontal or vertical? At Bigelow, the setup is vertical. Ingredients are poured into huge vats on the top floor, and flow down by gravity to the mixing machines on the second floor and finally the packaging machines on the ground floor. At Sara Lee, it's a combination. Ingredients flow down to the mixing chambers, but from there the bread dough moves horizontally through the ovens and packaging machines.

I suppose that their mixing may be vertical, but the shape of candy bars suggests that shaping each bar and coating it in chocolate is likely horizontal.
 
That doesn't explain why Snickers my contain almonds, yet Milky Way and Three Musketeers do not, but they may contain peanuts... is Mars including "almonds" under "peanuts?" In that case why not say "nuts?" And yes, I can't believe this is turning into a legitimate serious (if you can call it that) discussion.
 
Well, it's possible they have a couple assembly factories, each of which are responsible for a variety of products.  Being a huge company with multiple products, multiple factories make sense.  There's a certain variety and output you need to hit in your industry before that occurs but it's certainly possible.
 
LooseCannon said:
Being a huge company with multiple products, multiple factories make sense.
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Not generally true. Specifically, it is unusual for a highly specialized product like a candy bar to be made in more than one place.

Consider the logistics and economics of it. Candy bars require a number of ingredients - such as chocolate and peanuts - which themselves come from limited areas. There's a significant cost of shipping to get those ingredients to the factory. It makes more sense to pay that shipping once, to a single factory.

This is why Bigelow Tea makes all their tea in one factory. They have to import tea leaves from places like India, and there's no way they want to pay for any more shipping than necessary.

Or if you want an example from a truly huge company, consider Coca-Cola. Despite the reputation of the formula being secret, it is actually well-known. And some of the ingredients are quite exotic (decocanized cocaine leaves and kola nuts being the best examples). So they ship all that stuff to one location (Atlanta) and make all the syrup there. Then they ship the syrup to local bottlers. So distributing some functions makes sense, but not those functions involving initial importing of ingredients.

Contrast with Sara Lee, which makes bread. Bread has no exotic ingredients. Flour, milk, yeast and the rest are widely available just about anywhere. Also, freshness matters for bread - unlike candy bars or tea or Coke, which have long shelf lives. So Sara Lee has a number of bakeries across the country - the one I work at supplies just 2 states (Colorado and Wyoming). But if bread required something odd like elephant foreskin, you can bet it would only be made in one place and then shipped to stores from there.

Onhell said:
I can't believe this is turning into a legitimate serious (if you can call it that) discussion.
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The name of the game is REVERSAL. When a discussion looks like it should be serious, I inject insanity. When it looks like fodder for the Holy Hamster, I treat it with deathly seriousness.
 
However, for people with allergies, all it takes is a tiny part of that drop to become deathly ill. So Mars Inc. is just trying to cover their ass in case that happens.
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I think there are far more peanut allergies than ones concerning almonds, seeing how a peanut is a nut and an almond technically is a stone, the hard nutlike center of fruits such as peaches or plums. There is a protein in peanuts in which people who have severe allergic reactions. The reaction is caused by a miscue in the body's immune system which identify the protein as a foreign invader, the immune system goes into overdrive causing  anaphylaxis. 
 
Onhell said:
is Mars including "almonds" under "peanuts?" In that case why not say "nuts?"
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I hate to be so picky, but the reason may be that peanuts aren't nuts. They are actually beans. So by legal definition, they can't just write "may contain nuts" because it technically is either not correct or just part of the truth. Plus, I believe that some people are specifically allergic to peanuts, so they are required to write it there. So yeah, it really is nitpicking (I usually want to kick people who say peanuts aren't nuts), but a single little error, omission or inaccuracy has the possibility of costing the company millions if somebody decides to sue them for it.
 
Okay.  In that case, would it make sense to have two separate lines but in the same factory, SMX?  I know that Mars has pushed their "No contact with Peanuts" thing hard, so I would assume they would ensure a separation between the various lines.
 
Not to mention Mars also makes M%M's, Bounty (coconut bar), Whiskas (cat food), Pedigree petfood, Uncle Ben's and Skittles... I'm surprised they don't have "may contain cat food" in their chocolate wrappers :p
 
LooseCannon said:
Okay.  In that case, would it make sense to have two separate lines but in the same factory, SMX?  I know that Mars has pushed their "No contact with Peanuts" thing hard, so I would assume they would ensure a separation between the various lines.
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They might have multiple lines in the same factory. It's obviously impossible to say for sure without seeing the factory. Peanut oil issues aside, it makes most sense to have minimal lines for candy bars in general, with those lines configured to handle all candy bar types.

But I maintain that the most likely approach to the peanut oil issue is thoroughly cleaning the production lines after making a product that involves peanuts. Let me give one example from my experience...

At Bigelow Tea, the flagship product is a flavored tea called "Constant Comment". This tea's dominant flavor is orange, derived from orange peel as an ingredient. That ingredient is highly potent due to the citrus oils it contains. Yet Bigelow is able to clean their production lines sufficiently to remove all the citrus oil after a Constant Comment production run. If they can remove citrus oil, why can't Mars remove peanut oil?

The main point to keep in mind is that a production line is a massive investment, costing millions of dollars to build. Even huge companies don't do that unless they absolutely have to. Mars may have felt that need, but I can't see the removal of peanut oil being a big enough incentive. If they do have multiple production lines, the likely reason are either to satisfy demand or because one line couldn't be configured to handle all products.
 
Even with thorough cleaning, though, there's the possibility for human error.  Hence why I think there must be two separate lines.  It's certainly possible that one line was not created BECAUSE they wanted to push no peanuts.  But I think it was an advertising advantage Mars felt they could easily take advantage of.
 
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