McCormick's is Safe!

In the last couple of weeks, I have been on a quest to find "safe" cake flavorings for the cakes and frosting I am making for my cake decorating class. Let me tell you, it has not been an easy or quick task. Eventually, I will post each item that I use so that you can use the same items if you wish to make your child's cakes and want to save yourself the research time.

Last week, I was happy to receive an e-mail from McCormick's. They sell cake flavorings, as well as many, many other products. I asked them about the safety of their products and here is their response:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate your interest in our products and welcome the opportunity to be of assistance to you.

We are happy to inform you that all of our McCormick products are free of peanuts and tree nuts. McCormick does not use peanuts or tree nuts in any of our products.

We are aware of special allergies and intolerances to certain ingredients such as the following:

Peanuts Fish Soy proteins Sulfites
Tree nuts Eggs Wheat proteins Yellow No. 5 & 6
Shellfish Milk Red Pepper

As a responsible food company, our company follows the U.S. Food Drug & Cosmetic Act regulations to ensure consumer safety concerning food allergens. We declare these ingredients on our label in the ingredient statement. Federal regulations require us to list sulfites if they are over 10 parts per million, so we use that as our label declaration limit. Because we are constantly improving our products, we encourage you to read the ingredient statement on our packages at the time of your purchase.

In addition, we follow good manufacturing practices at our plants. Our employees are trained in the importance of correct labeling and the necessity of performing thorough equipment wash-downs to eliminate cross-contact of ingredients.

Although we cannot guarantee our products to be 100% free of allergens not listed on the label, we want you to know that we take this situation seriously and have taken extra precautions to eliminate the possibility of mislabeling or cross-contact.

We invite you to join our "Friends and Flavor Club" and receive our newsletter, and personalized recipes and cooking tips. You can join by clicking on "Friends and Flavor" at www.McCormick.com.

If we can be of further assistance, please call us at 1-800-632-5847, Monday through Friday, 9:30AM to 9PM, and weekends 11AM to 7PM Eastern Time. If you wish to respond to this note by e-mail, please include your name and e-mail address.

We hope to have the continued pleasure of serving you.

Sincerely,

Wanda Goodman
Consumer Affairs Specialist

This was great news! It can be a little confusing though. They have an "almond flavoring." How in the world could that be free of nuts? Remember these are "artificial flavorings." They do not need to use the actual nut to get the almond flavoring. While this would be safe for someone with a tree nut allergy, I still don't advocate using it. It would be confusing to everyone involved and that is the last thing you want.

You will also note at the bottom of the response, she states she cannot "guarantee" their product's safety. Keep in mind nearly every company you encounter will give you that disclaimer for legal reasons. Since they don't use any nuts in their products, I think it is safe to assume there will not be any in any of their products.

It is nice to know you can buy McCormick with confidence. There are not a lot of companies out there that I feel that way about. I have only tried their clear vanilla flavoring but I plan to buy more flavors on my next grocery store trip.