8 ms·

To comply with a new sesame allergy law, some businesses add – sesame

40 points by lando2319 4y ago

bell-cot 4y ago
{Sigh/} The first road to Hell is unregulated dirt, the second road is paved with well-intended regulations.
- Rhapso 4y ago
  But hell itself is run exclusively off of cheap child labor with no safety equipment!
- femiagbabiaka 4y ago
  It’s the corporations actually poisoning people though no? What’s the alternative, a status quo of occasional accidental poisoning due to poor hygiene? This sort of corporate malfeasance is not a uniquely American thing, but it has a libertarian streak that feels all too familiar. Maybe corporations could spend some profits on figuring out food safety for the public good, too much to ask I guess.
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    Saying "Corporations" gets more clicks for the Washington Post, but there's no reason to think that Kate & Carol's Corner Bakery isn't in the exact same bad situation. Also, the "...instead of conducting the careful cleaning required for foods without sesame..." reason sounds fishy to me. Any facility processing food at scale already has to do a lot of careful cleaning. My first guess - the "cleaning" standard in the new sesame regulation is so strict that it would require "never attempted anything like this before" levels of effort. Second guess - perfect cleaning won't actually cover your regulatory butt if your supply chain has sesame problems...and there are severe sesame problems in their supply chains.
    - femiagbabiaka 4y ago
      >Saying "Corporations" gets more clicks for the Washington Post, but there's no reason to think that Kate & Carol's Corner Bakery isn't in the exact same bad situation. Small businesses supported gluten allergies well before any large corporations did. It's much easier to control small batches than large ones. > Also, the "...instead of conducting the careful cleaning required for foods without sesame..." reason sounds fishy to me. Any facility processing food at scale already has to do a lot of careful cleaning. My first guess - the "cleaning" standard in the new sesame regulation is so strict that it would require "never attempted anything like this before" levels of effort. Second guess - perfect cleaning won't actually cover your regulatory butt if your supply chain has sesame problems...and there are severe sesame problems in their supply chains. You clearly didn't take the time to read the regulation or even the article before replying.
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    That's a lot of outrage, but ultimately, why should a bakery have to sell products without sesame?
    - femiagbabiaka 4y ago
      Pure sophistry. The problem isn't selling items with sesame in it, it's improperly labeling that sesame is in an item in the first place. Did you read the article?
      - lkbm 4y ago
        The issue here isn't people adding sesame and not mentioning it. The problem is that if there were something else with sesame using the same machinery, anywhere along the line, you can't simply say "this item might have traces of sesame" (you're still liable, per the FDA) and you can't say "this item has sesame" (because it doesn't; it just has possible sesame cross-contamination). You have to either have fully eliminated the possibility of cross-contamination or make sesame an explicit ingredient. One is free; one is expensive.
        femiagbabiaka 4y ago
        So we return to the beginning: corporations unwilling to practice basic food safety.
      - kspacewalk2 4y ago
        No, that is not the problem at all. There's no allegation of improper labelling. Rather, the problem instead is that the law regulating proper labelling leaves those with sesame allergy worse off, because it incentivises adding small amounts of sesame flour, labelling the product as "contains sesame" and being done with it. There's nothing wrong or improper with doing that - your labels are all correct, the law is followed.
        femiagbabiaka 4y ago
        How is not labeling a product as containing something that it does through cross contamination not mislabeling? If they can prove that it is not poisonous to those with allergies then there is no issue.
msie 4y ago
It took me a little bit to understand the article's wording but here goes. The manufacturers say it is difficult to comply with the law by cleaning the equipment. So they want to label that the product may contain sesame by accident. But they can't say that because it wasn't intentional. So they have to actually put sesame in so they can label it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- traviswt 4y ago
  Doesn't have to be actually difficult to comply for them to do this. It just has to be more expensive to comply compared to the cost of adding the allergen and the lost revenue from people who avoid due to the allergen. It's like an auto maker evaluating the cost of a recall compared with just paying out settlements. There's no morality or logic involved, it's just numbers.
1827162 4y ago
I almost can't believe this is actually for real, it reads like satire from TheOnion.com. Welcome to America in 2023, where they are deliberately adding allergens to food, in order to comply with potentially over-reaching laws... It's peanuts too: https://snacksafely.com/2022/04/company-will-add-trace-amount-of-allergen-to-all-products-to-skirt-safety-regulation/ https://snacksafely.com/2022/04/company-will-add-trace-amoun...
- chomp 4y ago
  > potentially over-reaching laws I was with you until you mentioned over-reaching. Problem is, there's a small segment of the population that will literally die from sesame. 0.3% total sesame allergies, maybe less will get death as the side effect. It's perfectly reasonable to require companies to omit sesame from products that don't have it labeled, and forbid cross contamination. It's also reasonable for companies to consider including it and labeling it for ease of operations. I worked in the food industry and dealing food cross-contamination is really hard. There is no one-size-fits-all for public health on a scale as large as the US.
  - 1827162 4y ago
    Yes, potentially over-reaching, because it's debatable whether it's overreaching or not. And the manufacturers doing this, is a prime example of the law of unintended consequences. Where trying to solve a problem through legislation makes it worse in the end.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      There do appear to be unintended consequences, but it's not clear whether things are "worse" now than before. It's worse if you have a sesame allergy and want to be able to eat as many products as before. Now there are fewer products that are safe for you to eat. At the same time, it is now easier for you to tell what products are unsafe for you to eat. Before, you could only tell if there were sesame seeds on the outside, or if they were listed in the ingredients. But sometimes a food item (in a restaurant, for example) might have sesame seeds on the inside, or ground up in a sauce, and you'd never know it was there. I once ordered a vegetarian dish at a Singaporean restaurant and was surprised to find that it had a sauce with ground up shrimp in it. I'm not vegetarian, but I don't like seafood and didn't expect to find any in a vegetarian dish.
grey_earthling 4y ago
> under federal labeling rules, they can’t state that their products contain sesame unless the items actually contain it — so they’re adding sesame and labeling it This is the crux of it. Here in the UK, it's common for food to be labelled “May contain traces of milk” and other allergens, when the ingredients list doesn't include those allergens.
- celdon25 4y ago
  > under federal labeling rules Anyone know what the specific regulation is? Seems the article missed an opportunity to provide actionable information instead of the usual doomsaying
  - msla 4y ago
    > Seems the article missed an opportunity to provide actionable information instead of the usual doomsaying The action the article wants you to take is to be mad and keep clicking.
- colanderman 4y ago
  This is common in the US too. The text of the bill [1] literally just adds sesame to a list of allergens. There is some important fact the article is not reporting on -- why manufacturers simply don't add "may contain sesame" like they do for other allergens is unanswered. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/578/text/pl https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/578...
  - TylerE 4y ago
    The labeling I usuaully see is something like "Processed in a facility that also processes <x>"
  - lkbm 4y ago
    I remember some discussion in January when this first hit the news. Here's the money quote: "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."[0] [0] https://www.dallasnews.com/food/restaurant-news/2022/12/29/so-disappointing-chick-fil-a-olive-garden-add-sesame-to-foods-ahead-of-new-allergy-law/ https://www.dallasnews.com/food/restaurant-news/2022/12/29/s...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
shahar2k 4y ago
this reminds me of being scolded as an ADHD child for not cleaning enough... and really the only solution to my mind if I got the same result either way was to give up entirely.
juliansimioni 4y ago
So, to be clear, this is absolutely a case of these businesses making choices they know are harmful but are technically legal, and is bad. But I wonder if in the long term adding trace amounts of common allergens to many foods is a viable strategy? I read recently that exposing kids to trace amounts of peanuts at a young age drastically cuts down on peanut allergies. Maybe a better strategy is to make a pill with tiny amounts of common allergens (shellfish, peanut butter, sesame, celery, etc) and encourage parents to feed it to their kids daily?
- csours 4y ago
  > But I wonder if in the long term adding trace amounts of common allergens to many foods is a viable strategy? You don't know when any random person will eat that food for the first (or second) time.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamba_(snack) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamba_(snack) like this? they’re great.
- infecto 4y ago
  These already exist usually in powder form that you mix into food. I think one of the original studies came from the lower rate of peanut allergies in Israel. Turns out the majority of kids are given these Bamba peanut puff snacks from an early age.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  Allergies do develop later in life. I developed a milk allergy (casein or whey, not lactose) in my twenties.
  - ignite 4y ago
    Not only can they develop, they apparently can be induced by things like tick bites! You can develop an allergy to meat after being bitten by a tick. https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/index.html#:~:text=Alpha%2Dgal%20syndrome%20(AGS),other%20products%20containing%20alpha%2Dgal https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/index.html#:~:text=Alpha....
hprotagonist 4y ago
a textbook example of a perverse incentive. “the bar to establish absence is too high, the risks of saying maybe are too high, so we will instead guarantee a presence and not get sued. “
sys_64738 4y ago
This is no different from the CA labels saying some random widget could give you cancer. It's to protect against liability where you can say you labeled for it.
- colanderman 4y ago
  No, it is different, because apparently manufacturers are literally adding sesame, not just labeling it. But labeling "may contain traces of" is common for other allergens. Why is sesame special? The article doesn't address this.
- itronitron 4y ago
  Except in this case the food manufacturers are deliberately adding the allergen as an ingredient, so it would be like adding asbestos to an FFP2 mask and adding the CA label.
  - denimnerd42 4y ago
    It would be like making asbestos products and FFP2 masks in the same factory and labeling laws not allowing you to say the FFP2 may have asbestos but allowing you to say the FFP2 mask was made with asbestos if you added some.
- s1mon 4y ago
  Prop 65 is well intentioned, but flawed. It's screwed up because it's enforced by third parties suing the company that makes the widgets. It's also crazy because things that are "known to the state of California to cause cancer" are contained in trace amounts in a lot of things. At these trace amounts there's a lot of question if there's really any chance of triggering cancer. I've worked on products where there's a calculation of how much surface area of a particular part might come in contact with the user and if the contents of that plastic resin might theoretically cause cancer. The reality is that you'd probably need to ingest it or burn it and inhale it, possibly in very large quantities, to cause cancer. I've lost family members to cancer, and I would love an effective and sane approach to limiting carcinogens in the environment, but I'm not sure that prop 65 is a great way to do it. It mostly makes some lawyers rich suing big companies. It also leads to prop 65 warnings all over the place as a cover-your-ass move to the point where they stop having any meaningful impact.
idbehold 4y ago
This reminds me of prescription drug ads now including this disclaimer: "Do not take [drug name] if you are allergic to [drug name]." When it's this much easier to comply with the letter of the law than the intent, is it any wonder why things like this happen?
- alpaca128 4y ago
  With one of my electronic devices I once saw the warning "put down device if it gets too hot to hold". Apparently pain isn't enough of a hint anymore.
snthd 4y ago
Another unintended consequence could be increased exposure to potential allergens in babies, reducing allergy rates. "Give babies peanut butter to cut allergy by 77%, study says" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64987074 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64987074
- hadlock 4y ago
  Yep, peanut allergies used to be 1 in 10,000, then the advice changed to "introduce peanuts after age 3" and allergies skyrocketed to nearly 1 in 100. The advice has since been reversed and they say to introduce trace amounts of allergens as early as children start solid foods (usually age 5-7 months, 6 months being most common). There are no children at our daycare with peanut allergies and in fact they get snacks with peanut butter on the regular. Seems to be working. Note to any future parents out there, Trader Joes sells an excellent "multi nut butter" which has all the various allergen heavy nuts and quasi-nuts out there, and they also sell "Bambas" which are like cheetos but they're made of peanut... puff stuff, and really hard to choke on since they just kind of dissolve in your mouth. Obviously, consult your doctor, but we've seen a huge reversal in kids allergies in the last 3-4 years as the suggested advice has done a 180 and parents are following it.
zamfi 4y ago
> In a twist few would have expected, however, many food companies have chosen to add small amounts of sesame flour to products that were previously sesame-free, instead of conducting the careful cleaning required for foods without sesame. I beg to differ -- this is exactly what should have been expected if this is the cheapest path forward. The FDA doesn't allow precautionary labeling (e.g., "may contain traces of..." or "manufactured in a facility that also...") in place of "proper cleaning procedures". This impacts sesame because a ton of industrial-scale bakers produce both sesame and non-sesame items on the same lines, and these could in theory be cleaned and verified, and precautionary labeling isn't a substitute for that. So, forced to either (a) overhaul likely-daily cleaning procedures to ensure and then later verify that not even trace amounts of sesame protein are present in products on the line, or (b) sprinkle some literal <s>fairy</s> sesame dust into these items and list it in the ingredients, manufacturers understandably chose the latter. Perhaps future facilities will be built to segregate sesame from non-sesame production lines, but current ones don't -- and a retrofit probably costs far more than whatever reduction in sales they may face from including sesame.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper and easier to just say "contains trace amounts of sesame" and not actually add sesame intentionally? I don't understand the point of actually adding sesame.
  - pauby 4y ago
    > The FDA doesn't allow precautionary labeling (e.g., "may contain traces of..." or "manufactured in a facility that also...") in place of "proper cleaning procedures".
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - cjensen 4y ago
    The article says that manufacturers are not allowed to list sesame as an ingredient unless it actually is an ingredient. The law says they can't warn about potential sesame contamination. Instead it must either be an actual ingredient or manufacturers must clean the equipment. Seems like this fiasco could have been avoided if someone had gone and talked to manufacturers about how big a deal it would be to clean stuff. I'm guessing this isn't a question of a small amount of profit loss; it's probably a big expensive deal to comply with this law.
SakiWatanabe 4y ago
I wish the article would just summarize the content in the title, so I don’t have to read the entire article. Tldr: restaurant cannot say “the product may contain traces of sesame”, they must include it on the ingredient list, but if it’s on the ingredients list they must add it to the product.
Georgelemental 4y ago
"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

40 points by lando2319 4y ago

bell-cot 4y ago

{Sigh/} The first road to Hell is unregulated dirt, the second road is paved with well-intended regulations.

Rhapso 4y ago
But hell itself is run exclusively off of cheap child labor with no safety equipment!
femiagbabiaka 4y ago
It’s the corporations actually poisoning people though no? What’s the alternative, a status quo of occasional accidental poisoning due to poor hygiene? This sort of corporate malfeasance is not a uniquely American thing, but it has a libertarian streak that feels all too familiar. Maybe corporations could spend some profits on figuring out food safety for the public good, too much to ask I guess.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Saying "Corporations" gets more clicks for the Washington Post, but there's no reason to think that Kate & Carol's Corner Bakery isn't in the exact same bad situation. Also, the "...instead of conducting the careful cleaning required for foods without sesame..." reason sounds fishy to me. Any facility processing food at scale already has to do a lot of careful cleaning. My first guess - the "cleaning" standard in the new sesame regulation is so strict that it would require "never attempted anything like this before" levels of effort. Second guess - perfect cleaning won't actually cover your regulatory butt if your supply chain has sesame problems...and there are severe sesame problems in their supply chains.
  - femiagbabiaka 4y ago
    >Saying "Corporations" gets more clicks for the Washington Post, but there's no reason to think that Kate & Carol's Corner Bakery isn't in the exact same bad situation. Small businesses supported gluten allergies well before any large corporations did. It's much easier to control small batches than large ones. > Also, the "...instead of conducting the careful cleaning required for foods without sesame..." reason sounds fishy to me. Any facility processing food at scale already has to do a lot of careful cleaning. My first guess - the "cleaning" standard in the new sesame regulation is so strict that it would require "never attempted anything like this before" levels of effort. Second guess - perfect cleaning won't actually cover your regulatory butt if your supply chain has sesame problems...and there are severe sesame problems in their supply chains. You clearly didn't take the time to read the regulation or even the article before replying.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  That's a lot of outrage, but ultimately, why should a bakery have to sell products without sesame?
  - femiagbabiaka 4y ago
    Pure sophistry. The problem isn't selling items with sesame in it, it's improperly labeling that sesame is in an item in the first place. Did you read the article?
    - lkbm 4y ago
      The issue here isn't people adding sesame and not mentioning it. The problem is that if there were something else with sesame using the same machinery, anywhere along the line, you can't simply say "this item might have traces of sesame" (you're still liable, per the FDA) and you can't say "this item has sesame" (because it doesn't; it just has possible sesame cross-contamination). You have to either have fully eliminated the possibility of cross-contamination or make sesame an explicit ingredient. One is free; one is expensive.
      - femiagbabiaka 4y ago
        So we return to the beginning: corporations unwilling to practice basic food safety.
    - kspacewalk2 4y ago
      No, that is not the problem at all. There's no allegation of improper labelling. Rather, the problem instead is that the law regulating proper labelling leaves those with sesame allergy worse off, because it incentivises adding small amounts of sesame flour, labelling the product as "contains sesame" and being done with it. There's nothing wrong or improper with doing that - your labels are all correct, the law is followed.
      - femiagbabiaka 4y ago
        How is not labeling a product as containing something that it does through cross contamination not mislabeling? If they can prove that it is not poisonous to those with allergies then there is no issue.

msie 4y ago

It took me a little bit to understand the article's wording but here goes. The manufacturers say it is difficult to comply with the law by cleaning the equipment. So they want to label that the product may contain sesame by accident. But they can't say that because it wasn't intentional. So they have to actually put sesame in so they can label it.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
traviswt 4y ago
Doesn't have to be actually difficult to comply for them to do this. It just has to be more expensive to comply compared to the cost of adding the allergen and the lost revenue from people who avoid due to the allergen. It's like an auto maker evaluating the cost of a recall compared with just paying out settlements. There's no morality or logic involved, it's just numbers.

1827162 4y ago

I almost can't believe this is actually for real, it reads like satire from TheOnion.com. Welcome to America in 2023, where they are deliberately adding allergens to food, in order to comply with potentially over-reaching laws... It's peanuts too: https://snacksafely.com/2022/04/company-will-add-trace-amount-of-allergen-to-all-products-to-skirt-safety-regulation/ https://snacksafely.com/2022/04/company-will-add-trace-amoun...

chomp 4y ago
> potentially over-reaching laws I was with you until you mentioned over-reaching. Problem is, there's a small segment of the population that will literally die from sesame. 0.3% total sesame allergies, maybe less will get death as the side effect. It's perfectly reasonable to require companies to omit sesame from products that don't have it labeled, and forbid cross contamination. It's also reasonable for companies to consider including it and labeling it for ease of operations. I worked in the food industry and dealing food cross-contamination is really hard. There is no one-size-fits-all for public health on a scale as large as the US.
- 1827162 4y ago
  Yes, potentially over-reaching, because it's debatable whether it's overreaching or not. And the manufacturers doing this, is a prime example of the law of unintended consequences. Where trying to solve a problem through legislation makes it worse in the end.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    There do appear to be unintended consequences, but it's not clear whether things are "worse" now than before. It's worse if you have a sesame allergy and want to be able to eat as many products as before. Now there are fewer products that are safe for you to eat. At the same time, it is now easier for you to tell what products are unsafe for you to eat. Before, you could only tell if there were sesame seeds on the outside, or if they were listed in the ingredients. But sometimes a food item (in a restaurant, for example) might have sesame seeds on the inside, or ground up in a sauce, and you'd never know it was there. I once ordered a vegetarian dish at a Singaporean restaurant and was surprised to find that it had a sauce with ground up shrimp in it. I'm not vegetarian, but I don't like seafood and didn't expect to find any in a vegetarian dish.

grey_earthling 4y ago

> under federal labeling rules, they can’t state that their products contain sesame unless the items actually contain it — so they’re adding sesame and labeling it This is the crux of it. Here in the UK, it's common for food to be labelled “May contain traces of milk” and other allergens, when the ingredients list doesn't include those allergens.

celdon25 4y ago
> under federal labeling rules Anyone know what the specific regulation is? Seems the article missed an opportunity to provide actionable information instead of the usual doomsaying
- msla 4y ago
  > Seems the article missed an opportunity to provide actionable information instead of the usual doomsaying The action the article wants you to take is to be mad and keep clicking.
colanderman 4y ago
This is common in the US too. The text of the bill [1] literally just adds sesame to a list of allergens. There is some important fact the article is not reporting on -- why manufacturers simply don't add "may contain sesame" like they do for other allergens is unanswered. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/578/text/pl https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/578...
- TylerE 4y ago
  The labeling I usuaully see is something like "Processed in a facility that also processes <x>"
- lkbm 4y ago
  I remember some discussion in January when this first hit the news. Here's the money quote: "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."[0] [0] https://www.dallasnews.com/food/restaurant-news/2022/12/29/so-disappointing-chick-fil-a-olive-garden-add-sesame-to-foods-ahead-of-new-allergy-law/ https://www.dallasnews.com/food/restaurant-news/2022/12/29/s...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

shahar2k 4y ago

this reminds me of being scolded as an ADHD child for not cleaning enough... and really the only solution to my mind if I got the same result either way was to give up entirely.

juliansimioni 4y ago

So, to be clear, this is absolutely a case of these businesses making choices they know are harmful but are technically legal, and is bad. But I wonder if in the long term adding trace amounts of common allergens to many foods is a viable strategy? I read recently that exposing kids to trace amounts of peanuts at a young age drastically cuts down on peanut allergies. Maybe a better strategy is to make a pill with tiny amounts of common allergens (shellfish, peanut butter, sesame, celery, etc) and encourage parents to feed it to their kids daily?

csours 4y ago
> But I wonder if in the long term adding trace amounts of common allergens to many foods is a viable strategy? You don't know when any random person will eat that food for the first (or second) time.
hprotagonist 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamba_(snack) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamba_(snack) like this? they’re great.
infecto 4y ago
These already exist usually in powder form that you mix into food. I think one of the original studies came from the lower rate of peanut allergies in Israel. Turns out the majority of kids are given these Bamba peanut puff snacks from an early age.
kayodelycaon 4y ago
Allergies do develop later in life. I developed a milk allergy (casein or whey, not lactose) in my twenties.
- ignite 4y ago
  Not only can they develop, they apparently can be induced by things like tick bites! You can develop an allergy to meat after being bitten by a tick. https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/index.html#:~:text=Alpha%2Dgal%20syndrome%20(AGS),other%20products%20containing%20alpha%2Dgal https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/index.html#:~:text=Alpha....

hprotagonist 4y ago

a textbook example of a perverse incentive. “the bar to establish absence is too high, the risks of saying maybe are too high, so we will instead guarantee a presence and not get sued. “

sys_64738 4y ago

This is no different from the CA labels saying some random widget could give you cancer. It's to protect against liability where you can say you labeled for it.

colanderman 4y ago
No, it is different, because apparently manufacturers are literally adding sesame, not just labeling it. But labeling "may contain traces of" is common for other allergens. Why is sesame special? The article doesn't address this.
itronitron 4y ago
Except in this case the food manufacturers are deliberately adding the allergen as an ingredient, so it would be like adding asbestos to an FFP2 mask and adding the CA label.
- denimnerd42 4y ago
  It would be like making asbestos products and FFP2 masks in the same factory and labeling laws not allowing you to say the FFP2 may have asbestos but allowing you to say the FFP2 mask was made with asbestos if you added some.
s1mon 4y ago
Prop 65 is well intentioned, but flawed. It's screwed up because it's enforced by third parties suing the company that makes the widgets. It's also crazy because things that are "known to the state of California to cause cancer" are contained in trace amounts in a lot of things. At these trace amounts there's a lot of question if there's really any chance of triggering cancer. I've worked on products where there's a calculation of how much surface area of a particular part might come in contact with the user and if the contents of that plastic resin might theoretically cause cancer. The reality is that you'd probably need to ingest it or burn it and inhale it, possibly in very large quantities, to cause cancer. I've lost family members to cancer, and I would love an effective and sane approach to limiting carcinogens in the environment, but I'm not sure that prop 65 is a great way to do it. It mostly makes some lawyers rich suing big companies. It also leads to prop 65 warnings all over the place as a cover-your-ass move to the point where they stop having any meaningful impact.

idbehold 4y ago

This reminds me of prescription drug ads now including this disclaimer: "Do not take [drug name] if you are allergic to [drug name]." When it's this much easier to comply with the letter of the law than the intent, is it any wonder why things like this happen?

alpaca128 4y ago
With one of my electronic devices I once saw the warning "put down device if it gets too hot to hold". Apparently pain isn't enough of a hint anymore.

snthd 4y ago

Another unintended consequence could be increased exposure to potential allergens in babies, reducing allergy rates. "Give babies peanut butter to cut allergy by 77%, study says" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64987074 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64987074

hadlock 4y ago
Yep, peanut allergies used to be 1 in 10,000, then the advice changed to "introduce peanuts after age 3" and allergies skyrocketed to nearly 1 in 100. The advice has since been reversed and they say to introduce trace amounts of allergens as early as children start solid foods (usually age 5-7 months, 6 months being most common). There are no children at our daycare with peanut allergies and in fact they get snacks with peanut butter on the regular. Seems to be working. Note to any future parents out there, Trader Joes sells an excellent "multi nut butter" which has all the various allergen heavy nuts and quasi-nuts out there, and they also sell "Bambas" which are like cheetos but they're made of peanut... puff stuff, and really hard to choke on since they just kind of dissolve in your mouth. Obviously, consult your doctor, but we've seen a huge reversal in kids allergies in the last 3-4 years as the suggested advice has done a 180 and parents are following it.

zamfi 4y ago

> In a twist few would have expected, however, many food companies have chosen to add small amounts of sesame flour to products that were previously sesame-free, instead of conducting the careful cleaning required for foods without sesame. I beg to differ -- this is exactly what should have been expected if this is the cheapest path forward. The FDA doesn't allow precautionary labeling (e.g., "may contain traces of..." or "manufactured in a facility that also...") in place of "proper cleaning procedures". This impacts sesame because a ton of industrial-scale bakers produce both sesame and non-sesame items on the same lines, and these could in theory be cleaned and verified, and precautionary labeling isn't a substitute for that. So, forced to either (a) overhaul likely-daily cleaning procedures to ensure and then later verify that not even trace amounts of sesame protein are present in products on the line, or (b) sprinkle some literal <s>fairy</s> sesame dust into these items and list it in the ingredients, manufacturers understandably chose the latter. Perhaps future facilities will be built to segregate sesame from non-sesame production lines, but current ones don't -- and a retrofit probably costs far more than whatever reduction in sales they may face from including sesame.

JohnFen 4y ago
Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper and easier to just say "contains trace amounts of sesame" and not actually add sesame intentionally? I don't understand the point of actually adding sesame.
- pauby 4y ago
  > The FDA doesn't allow precautionary labeling (e.g., "may contain traces of..." or "manufactured in a facility that also...") in place of "proper cleaning procedures".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cjensen 4y ago
  The article says that manufacturers are not allowed to list sesame as an ingredient unless it actually is an ingredient. The law says they can't warn about potential sesame contamination. Instead it must either be an actual ingredient or manufacturers must clean the equipment. Seems like this fiasco could have been avoided if someone had gone and talked to manufacturers about how big a deal it would be to clean stuff. I'm guessing this isn't a question of a small amount of profit loss; it's probably a big expensive deal to comply with this law.

SakiWatanabe 4y ago

I wish the article would just summarize the content in the title, so I don’t have to read the entire article. Tldr: restaurant cannot say “the product may contain traces of sesame”, they must include it on the ingredient list, but if it’s on the ingredients list they must add it to the product.

Georgelemental 4y ago

"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."