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From the exact same article (emphasis added): >If the ingredients DON'T include sesame, companies MUST take steps to prevent the foods from coming in contact w

by xoa 4y ago

From the exact same article (emphasis added): >If the ingredients DON'T include sesame, companies MUST take steps to prevent the foods from coming in contact with any sesame, known as cross-contamination. And as far as "may contain", also from the exact same article: >Some companies include statements on labels that say a food "may contain" a certain product or that the food is "produced in a facility" that also uses certain allergens. However, such statements are voluntary, not required, according to the FDA, and they DO NOT absolve the company of requirements to prevent cross-contamination. So the government has created a situation where anything without sesame is apparently vastly more expensive, or impossible, to manufacture now in the facilities they previously were. But the public would never tolerate banning sesame entirely just for some fraction being allergic, so of course it's still allowed as an actual intended ingredient in which case it must merely be labeled. Obvious result of this is obvious: in attempting to unrealistically force a new level of isolation on previously "best effort" products, and with no compensation, the result is people cease bothering with those now actively punished efforts. Bad unfunded mandate driven by activists without consulting with actual producers from the sound of it. A better approach might have been to support/reward the construction of new dedicated allergen free production facilities that could be devoted exclusively to those foods. But whatever the approach, it has to take into account actual demand vs costs. -------- Edit: I didn't do a good enough job in elaborating on the result for parent poster, and plenty in the overall thread seem not to see how this leads to wanting to actively add sesame, so copying my response post from farther down: Say we consider bakers. Essentially before the law there were 3 classes of bakers wrt sesame: known contaminated (actively using it as an ingredient), regular (not actively using it, but make no promises either way), and medical (actively promise to ensure no contamination as a product feature). This law banned regular bakers, and it did it in such a way that they all become medical bakers by default, because if they don't actively use sesame then they must meet the medical standard. But that's TERRIFYING for a regular baker for good reason. Before if they cooked both sesame goods (lots of delicious ones in high demand) and non-sesame goods (same) they could make reasonable efforts and that's fine. But medical means they now look at blame and liability for some child or adult having a serious reaction or even dying. And meeting that level of liability and standards may simply be impossible in an existing mixed normal facility. There is no funding for this mandate either. The obvious reaction to do is to switch to the "known contaminated" class instead. For the cost of adding a minuscule untasteable amount of sesame flour to everything, now they effectively return back to being regular bakers again. They can keep all their existing cooking, in their existing (very expensive, potentially impossible to move from) facilities. Like, what did anyone expect would happen here?

Semaphor 4y ago
> However, such statements are voluntary That made me wonder, and I looked it up: The situation is exactly the same in Germany, and presumably the EU. Does anyone know why a) this is not legally required when there's a reasonable chance of contamination and b) why laws are not written in such a way, that "contains traces" is enough if you aren't sure about cross contamination like in TFA's case. Naively, that seems like it would improve things for everyone?
- xoa 4y ago
  >Does anyone know why a) this is not legally required when there's a reasonable chance of contamination and b) why laws are not written in such a way, that "contains traces" is enough if you aren't sure about cross contamination like in TFA's case. >Naively, that seems like it would improve things for everyone? Again per the theme of this article: beware second (later) order effects. What is "reasonable chance of contamination", precisely? Once you start creating legal liability, all the incentives change. In a voluntary situation people may only write it if they're pretty sure it might be an issue, but if it's required and companies are punished if they get it wrong then the natural reaction is to just slap it on everything. If everything simply defaults to "may contain traces" then the notice is essentially worthless right? And someone with a serious allergy to a common food product should just assume that by default anyway. Which I think points to the real issue, which is that the approach is arguably all backwards. Certified/promised allergen free food, just like certified/promised kosher or a range of other things, are a specialized subset of food in general. This in some ways is similar to white lists vs black lists on the net in terms of dealing with content. Black lists are more appropriate when it's desired to be accepting by default (commonly when there are no or minimal life/safety factors). But it's expected that some objectionable things will slip through and then have to be reacted to after the fact. It prioritizes preventing false positives over false negatives, and it keeps overhead cost and uncertainty on the production side lower. When something is life/safety critical though, or similarly important, then instead it's better to do the opposite and white list. That prioritizes preventing false negatives: since everything must be explicitly and individually certified, nothing clearly failing criteria will ever appear. But of course this also means that potentially valuable things may get blocked from appearing, there are higher overhead costs, and producers in some cases may feel its riskier since they can't be sure they'll have a chance at all (which also raises cost). Both are important tools, but for medical products (and serious allergic reactions are a medical issue) it's probably almost universally better to white list. A purely tech example of an ongoing controversy would be "child safe internet": a lot of the efforts try to blacklist the adult general net into being child safe, which both doesn't work and causes major harm to regular adult discourse and expression. I think it'd be better to have approaches such as ".kids" and ".teens" TLDs or similar where nothing can go on that isn't pre-vetted to some standard. Then parents can restrict to those if they wish. That's a whole different discussion though!

by xoa 4y ago

Semaphor 4y ago

> However, such statements are voluntary That made me wonder, and I looked it up: The situation is exactly the same in Germany, and presumably the EU. Does anyone know why a) this is not legally required when there's a reasonable chance of contamination and b) why laws are not written in such a way, that "contains traces" is enough if you aren't sure about cross contamination like in TFA's case. Naively, that seems like it would improve things for everyone?

xoa 4y ago
>Does anyone know why a) this is not legally required when there's a reasonable chance of contamination and b) why laws are not written in such a way, that "contains traces" is enough if you aren't sure about cross contamination like in TFA's case. >Naively, that seems like it would improve things for everyone? Again per the theme of this article: beware second (later) order effects. What is "reasonable chance of contamination", precisely? Once you start creating legal liability, all the incentives change. In a voluntary situation people may only write it if they're pretty sure it might be an issue, but if it's required and companies are punished if they get it wrong then the natural reaction is to just slap it on everything. If everything simply defaults to "may contain traces" then the notice is essentially worthless right? And someone with a serious allergy to a common food product should just assume that by default anyway. Which I think points to the real issue, which is that the approach is arguably all backwards. Certified/promised allergen free food, just like certified/promised kosher or a range of other things, are a specialized subset of food in general. This in some ways is similar to white lists vs black lists on the net in terms of dealing with content. Black lists are more appropriate when it's desired to be accepting by default (commonly when there are no or minimal life/safety factors). But it's expected that some objectionable things will slip through and then have to be reacted to after the fact. It prioritizes preventing false positives over false negatives, and it keeps overhead cost and uncertainty on the production side lower. When something is life/safety critical though, or similarly important, then instead it's better to do the opposite and white list. That prioritizes preventing false negatives: since everything must be explicitly and individually certified, nothing clearly failing criteria will ever appear. But of course this also means that potentially valuable things may get blocked from appearing, there are higher overhead costs, and producers in some cases may feel its riskier since they can't be sure they'll have a chance at all (which also raises cost). Both are important tools, but for medical products (and serious allergic reactions are a medical issue) it's probably almost universally better to white list. A purely tech example of an ongoing controversy would be "child safe internet": a lot of the efforts try to blacklist the adult general net into being child safe, which both doesn't work and causes major harm to regular adult discourse and expression. I think it'd be better to have approaches such as ".kids" and ".teens" TLDs or similar where nothing can go on that isn't pre-vetted to some standard. Then parents can restrict to those if they wish. That's a whole different discussion though!