[lpolovets]

My understanding is this allergen over-labeling was inspired by the FDA in the first place. https://www.fastcompany.com/90830854/sesame-seed-allergen-fd...

From the linked article (from Jan 2023):

  But sesame does differ in one distinct way from eggs, peanuts, shellfish, milk, and soy: The seeds are teeny tiny and hard to keep track of. This means they’re prone to “cross-contamination,” in food-allergy terms. If you operate a bakery that makes sesame bagels, the odds are decent that rogue seeds will end up in your other products, too. Bad news for people with severe sesame allergies. But it’s also expensive and frustrating for food manufacturers to ensure the seeds are kept away from other foods, if they’re on the FDA’s major allergens list.
  
  Advocates have therefore been warning since December that the FASTER Act is poised to have a counter effect. Rather than minimize cross-contamination, as they argue the law requires, many big food brands have opted to add sesame to their bread products, then simply declare it as an ingredient. They are intentionally adding sesame flour to “avoid complying with the spirit and intent of the FASTER Act,” FARE tells Fast Company. That is cheaper than certifying that their facilities are 100% sesame-free.

[postmodest]

This is the same issue as Prop 65, and while we can all say "oh the law is bad" the real problem is _corporations are lazy_.

Instead of making sure their products are safe, they just say everything is unsafe, because they know consumers will become numb to it.

Our food shouldn't contain allergens, and our computer mice shouldn't give us cancer, but instead of taking the time to make sure of that, companies just tell us the products are dangerous, because they know we don't really have a choice.

They have the money and the capability, but they choose profit over consumer safety, and that's THEIR sin, not ours.

[quietbritishjim]

> Our food shouldn't contain allergens, and our computer mice shouldn't give us cancer

These things are not comparable. While adding sesame to everything to circumvent a law is certainly not fair, it is a reasonable ingredient to some products (whereas mice that give us cancer is, at the very least, not a goal). I like sesame buns! And, for young children, it's actually quite important to expose them to a range of allergens because shielding them makes them much more likely to develop allergies.

[NovemberWhiskey]

The problem with Prop 65 is that we've delegated plaintiff's attorneys to conduct private enforcement actions. Also that the law requires a warning, but doesn't require an explanation of what the material is, what part of the product contains it, or how you are likely to get exposed to it.

As I mentioned elsewhere on this discussion, this is why pure cotton patches now come with Prop 65 warnings (if you might use them to clean a rifle...)

Rag on corporations all you want, but Prop 65 is a terrible law.

[StableAlkyne]

> Our food shouldn't contain allergens

You can pry my gluten-laden, peanut-oil containing, dairy-filled pizza from my cold dead hands!

(The problem isn't allergens, many of which are delicious. The problem is not correctly labeling allergens - I think that's the point you wanted to make at least!)

[konschubert]

I don’t know what the margins on bread are, but I would bet that they are tiny since this is a competitive market.

Meaning that this kind of medical-lab-style cross contamination protocol will either raise the cost of the product or reduce the variety and choice.

[LorenPechtel]

This is the same issue as 65--setting an unreasonable standard and then blaming business when the standard isn't met.

It used to be that when companies produced products in the same facilities that produced products on the allergen list they would label them as "may contain". Not something they added, but not something they promised it did not inadvertently contain.

A company is free to produce products in facilities that do not also process the standard allergens but to do so will be more expensive and few people want to pay the extra cost for something which is of no benefit to them. If you're not allergic to sesame it does not matter if there's a bit of sesame in your food.

The whole food labeling thing is being taken to excess. The FDA is going bonkers about what companies are or are not adding, while there's no requirement for documenting what impurities might remain. As far as I'm concerned the FDA can take their labeling rules and shove them where the sun doesn't shine.

Instead, put a QR code. It comes up with a page that lists what they intentionally added (no generic categories--I know I don't have issues with all "artificial flavors" but I do with some. And "natural flavors" comes in a close second), what cross-contamination is likely and for any refined product what the raw material was that it came from and to what degree it was purified. In addition to the human-readable form it also contains a standardized representation meant for machine parsing. Scan the code with an appropriate app and it flags anything on the list that it has been told to flag.

[BobbyJo]

> _corporations are lazy_

In market terms: "corporations try to be capital-efficient because they are competing with each other over price-sensitive consumers."

[hollerith]

>Our food shouldn't contain allergens

Every protein is allergenic to somebody, and even some non-proteins are allergenic (e.g., they are small molecules that can get inside a somatic protein, which changes the somatic protein's shape, which makes the somatic protein allergenic).

[wnevets]

> the real problem is _corporations are lazy_.

But we knew that already. The people coming up with the rules must take that into account otherwise you get prop 65 warnings and cookie banners everywhere.

[bigyikes]

If the law doesn’t take into account human and corporate behavior, it’s not a good law. It may ultimately be the corporation’s “fault” but that doesn’t change the fact that the law created perverse incentives.

I hear the same argument for the GDPR laws that have resulted in annoying cookie banners everywhere. Sure, it’s technically the website owner’s fault for spying and adding a shitty banner, but… those banners didn’t exist until the law was created.

We need better laws that more wholly account for human behavior.

[smsm42]

And that's why we have insane laws. Because of people saying stuff like "our food shouldn't contain allergens" and spewing vague nonsense about evil profitmongers, while enabling demagogues who promote insane schemes built to inflame ignoramuses, like prop 65.

Virtually anything can be an allergen, and a lot of chemicals, given enough concentration and bad luck, can lead to cancer or birth defects. So ignoramuses demand laws that mark any chemical that can be reasonably thought of harming anyone in any circumstance possible in theory, and then blame corporations when the outcome is disastrous.

[solardev]

> Our food shouldn't contain allergens

But one person's allergens are another's tasty ingredients. I love my sesame bagels. I don't even know what food would remain if you banned all the allergens. Tapioca powder with beef flavors?

Sesame is one thing. It's delicious but probably not a major subsistence food for anyone. Chinese restaurants would miss their sesame oils though.

Next, it's hard enough to ban fish and shellfish. Many subcultures depend on them, especially near major bodies of water.

No tree nuts or peanuts? A lunch staple gone for millions. Jam will be so lonely.

Or wheat. Or milk. Or egg. Or soy? That's the end of breakfast and bakeries and dessert, I guess. The vegetarians will get awfully hungry.

I think at that point, the only thing left to eat would be the regulators themselves. Karma's never been so tasty...

[michaelcampbell]

> _corporations are lazy_

Corporations are optimized to make money; doing the non-lazy thing here costs money.

[Gormo]

>This is the same issue as Prop 65, and while we can all say "oh the law is bad" the real problem is _corporations are lazy_.

I mean, I'd definitely say that laws that are obviously incompatible with the incentive structures clearly present in real life are indeed bad laws.

Everyone is lazy -- or, more to the point, everyone has finite resources to allocate to their pursuits -- and expecting corporations and consumers to incur exorbitant costs in order to ensure optimal resolution to every possible edge case is neither reasonable nor realistic.

The problem isn't that "corporations are lazy"; the problem is that some people unaccountably expect them to be otherwise.

> Our food shouldn't contain allergens, and our computer mice shouldn't give us cancer, but instead of taking the time to make sure of that, companies just tell us the products are dangerous, because they know we don't really have a choice.

But we do indeed have plenty of choice. There are a ton of options for getting high-quality food and other products that go through lots of extra steps and give consumers much more granular information about how they were produced and what's in them. Those options are just much more expensive, and many people are perfectly happy to make the choice to use products that may e.g. increase a particular risk from 0.001% to 0.002% in order to avoid paying twice as much for it.

One note, however: it's impossible for food not to include allergens, as people can develop allergies to essentially anything. Encumbering access to food products that provide nutrition and pleasure to the vast majority of people in order to eliminate the responsibility of a small fraction of the population to exercise care over their own consumption choices is ethically dubious, to say the least.

[water-your-self]

Have computer mice ever caused cancer or isnthat hyperbole

[paulddraper]

> Rather than minimize cross-contamination, as they argue the law requires, many big food brands have opted to add sesame to their bread products, then simply declare it as an ingredient.

Right.

Bimbo has not been actually adding the allergen to the product. Presumably, they will start explicitly adding it, so the warning will be proper.

[beAbU]

(Non US)

On almost all food labels that I've seen for the last decade or so I've seen disclaimers like "this product is made in a factory that processes $ALLERGEN"

Usually $ALLERGEN is "tree nuts".

[Beretta_Vexee]

(France) "trace of nuts" "may contain accidental presence of nuts" "made in a workshop that processes nuts"

Certain products specifically for allergy sufferers have strange messages such as "non-quantifiable presence of an allergen". A PCR test can detect traces of a product's DNA, but it is impossible to quantify its volume because it is so small, or to trace the source of contamination.

They can't say there aren't any, there's no defined threshold or it's not possible to clearly quantify the quantity.

[lewispollard]

Same in the UK. For example, it's not uncommon to have food items that are certified as vegan, with a warning that they may contain traces of milk due to cross contamination - for most vegans, this is acceptable.

[quietbritishjim]

Sure, that's the sort of thing that the FDA were complaining about. From TFA:

> FDA officials acknowledged Tuesday that statements that a product “may contain” certain allergens “could be considered truthful and not misleading.”

[LorenPechtel]

Which is how it should be. But the FDA isn't allowing that anymore.

[mattmaroon]

We have that too.

[mc32]

This feels like it’s going the way of prop 65. To be on the safe side, everything gets the label, thus making the label pointless -it no longer helps differentiating things.

[ergocoder]

There is no penalty for over-labeling. Maybe some lost sales. Not a big deal.

But there is a huge potentially downside for under-labeling e.g. people dying. There is an ethic issue here as well even if we ignore money.

Also, the production pipeline is not 100% perfect. They produce millions of items each year. Even with 0.001% defect / cross-contamination, it could be troublesome.

More importantly, the exec who decides to under-label might end up in jail if people die from their decision.

Basic game theory really. If I'm an exec who is paid millions of dollars a year, I wouldn't risk it. Big deal if I earn a little less.

Unless FDA tips the scale and provides some guarantees, this warning means nothing. If FDA really wants to punish for over-labeling, I'd start adding a really small allergen, so the warning becomes accurate lol.

[AdamN]

That's sort of the boogeyman way it's been interpreted but the other way of looking at it is that those items really are carcinogenic. And it's not the 'give a rate 100x the amount anybody could possibly digest and of course they get cancer' trope either - these really are substances that have cancer risk and they're very common in modern life.

[PaulHoule]

No, I see canned peaches with a P65 label and I see canned peaches without them. Same for fried snacks.

[treflop]

I don’t think prop 65 is super useful but I don’t get why people think it’s meaningless.

I’ve definitely seen prop 65 on things that made me pause because nothing about the object (like a food bowl) should give me cancer and often I won’t buy it.

[MaximilianEmel]

That's how it already apparently is, and this is supposed to mitigate that.

[kevinventullo]

Doesn’t this open up the market for a newcomer to make verified sesame-free bread?

[aiauthoritydev]

Yes it does. It also good for the people with allergies as they can confidently buy that bread.

When FDA declares a new allergen, the top lawyer of the company that has presence from NY to SF seats down with the CEO, they then ask all the manufacturing units to do an audit of the said allergen use and then hire a third party auditor to verify if the allergen is used at all not just at their retail locations but in the entire supply chain. This involves the place where wheat is harvested to the restaurant where the bread is served. For a large company this is a millions of dollars and several quarters of project.

The lawyer and CEO needs to chalk out the plan. If they want to make sure their bread does not contain the said allergen they have to update all their processes right from where they buy their wheat to where they test their bread for the said allergen and retrain their staff, suppliers, QA etc. this adds millions of dollars in additional expenses per year.

Not only all this is complex that makes the bread expensive for EVERYONE, it is also much more prone to error.

It is much easier for your small local company to provide sesame free bread at slightly higher price to those who need it. You wont get it in the middle of death valley but that is fine.

[WA]

Sure, although these products usually are A LOT more expensive. Same with gluten-free. That stuff costs 3-10x as much as non-gluten free food.

Case in point: Italy has a wheat-rich cuisine and they give up to 140€ per month to people with Celiac disease to offset the higher costs of gluten-free food:

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2019/03/08/the-rise-and-r...

[betaby]

No. That market is too small to target. Overregulation is affecting consumer choices.

[aiauthoritydev]

The safest thing to do is to actually add the allergens to some degree and then warn people.

[simonbarker87]

But that’s such a pain in the but for those of us with a mild sesame problem.

If it says “may contain” then I’m fine. If it’s listed as an ingredient then I can’t risk having it.

For people who can’t have any at all you’ve not improved the situation but at the cost of making it significantly worse for people with a mild reaction.

[nindalf]

The article says that is precisely what they did and the FDA found that it violated the spirit of the law.

[b_t_s]

Safest from a corporate liability perspective, not from an inadvertently killing kids perspective. What you're suggesting is precisely what substantially all brands did with sesame, and it's why my family stopped eating hamburgers and hotdogs for several years...because we were literally unable to buy buns that would reliably not kill my daughter. The bread situation was almost as bad. We eventually found 1 brand available at 1 store and were able to feed her sandwiches once again. Now it wasn't much of a risk for our family because we understand how deadly allergies can be and we read ingredients carefully. But for kids whose parents are less careful, some of them die, particularly when there are zero safe options and you don't know if manufacturers are really adding the allergen or just saying they do for legal reasons(both were common). And it sounds like you may be referring to the common belief & research around early/small dose exposure helping kids avoid/outgrow allergies, but what's often lost in those conversations is that it sometimes works, and sometimes makes the allergies worse or even kills you, and nobody has the faintest clue why or which will happen to you. That's why the research generally includes allergen+medication, because the medication is necessary to avoid accidentally killing some percentage of the patients.

[hot_gril]

This reminds me of software services that intentionally avoid exceeding their uptime SLOs so they don't set dangerously high expectations.

[forgetfreeman]

Eh, this seems like a pretty bullshit argument on the part of manufacturers though. My expectation for a food prep area is that I should be able to safely eat off of any surface. This level of cleanliness should eliminate any contaminants from the environment bigger than airborne dust and given how relatively cheap air filtration equipment is a case could be made there as well. In any case sesame seeds are a hell of alot bigger than dust so there's no great excuse to have them wandering from one product line to another.

[NaOH]

There aren’t food prep areas when it comes to manufacturing at this scale. There are silos, storage tanks, essentially duct work to transport ingredients from bulk storage to production, and large-scale machinery which is designed to minimize exposure to the environment and people while in use. That’s putting aside the equipment and facilities used to acquire ingredients or store products after production.

Yes, all of this equipment is also designed to be cleaned and sanitized, but these are large surface areas covering large distances. And we’re talking about one little sesame seed which can’t be easily detected if it somehow makes its way into a product, unlike, say, the metal detectors all finished goods pass through to ensure no metal object found its way into something.

Spending time in facilities like Bimbo operates will disavow someone of the idea that the work a company like that does is akin to what happens in restaurants or catering facilities. These are factories where product assembly happens to involve edible parts.

[AnotherGoodName]

Hmm I wonder how good the us legal system is if a person insists they fell ill eating a product without a warning label and it goes to a jury trial?

There will undoubtedly be a focus on ‘whether you can be 100% sure there was no sesame dust in the air’. Without a perfect vacuum clean room (that doesn’t really exist) you can’t be. As in even if you’re really fucking clean your probably losing the case in the American legal system.

Fuck it my bread is made with a sprinkle of sesame flour and is known to contain potential carcinogens identified by the state of California.

[infecto]

I know its easy to blame the manufacturers but I don't believe they are entirely at fault here. Its not so much the size alone but that in these facilities they are not being cleaned after every run. Certainly the products that spoil are getting sanitize appropriately (eggs, dairy etc) but uncooked grains I suspect have a much larger time line for cleaning.

[creer]

That's really not true. In both ways, too. It's not realistic.

In the specific case of gluten-free vs normal flour, you might have a clean, safe kitchen but flour flies everywhere and it doesn't take much. The solution for a gluten-free kitchen is to only use gluten free products. I know of a restaurant that offers both gluten free and plain pizza crust and people who need to should know what that means: they try but it's not.

It's also not realistic as to "safely eating off surfaces". That's the goal and that's what test kits test for - but that's the point: the test kits are there because it's hard to achieve (and excess will result in contamination from cleaning products.)

[kortilla]

Pre-baked grain is not handled with those standards

[rising-sky]

Indeed and pretty disingenuous from the bakeries. Mislabelling as containing allergens when it does not can lead to a false sense of security or comfort in consumers. In that they may potentially consume an item and discover that it is labelled for the allergen, and subsequently assume that the lack of a reaction indicates tolerance. Potentially, leading them to consume accurately labelled products expecting the same non-reaction

[maxerickson]

They are saying to play by the spirit of the rules instead of working the ref on the letter of the rules.

But businesses could give a fuck about anything other than their current margin.

Putting it another way, the FDA put forth a regulation intended to make the lives of a certain group of people better, and the response was to figure out how to not bother with that.

[causality0]

You have a legal duty to not poison people by telling them there aren't allergens in their food when there might be. You don't have a legal duty to create a hypoallergenic product line. Regulations exist to protect your rights, not make your shopping experience more convenient.

[seanmcdirmid]

If producer A just puts sesame in their products, and that means they can undercut producer B who spends the money to comply with the spirit of the regulation, producer B goes out of business because their expenses are higher.

So what do you expect would happen? Consumers like cheaper rather than higher prices, this isn't a new thing.