5 ms·

> It was a clear and flagrant abuse of the "may contain traces" mechanism. The bakeries caused harm for consumers as a way to avoid the coats of doing business

> It was a clear and flagrant abuse of the "may contain traces" mechanism. The bakeries caused harm for consumers as a way to avoid the coats of doing business safely. In the exact same way that every product ever invented may cause cancer in California, I assume? This is a problem with the FDA, not the companies. Give a dog a long leash, they're going to use the slack.

heavyset_go 2y ago
Companies aren't dogs, companies have obligations that they need to fulfill and they're choosing to neglect them.
- starttoaster 2y ago
  > Companies aren't dogs Metaphor, but sure, quite literally they're not dogs. Very true. > companies have obligations that they need to fulfill and they're choosing to neglect them. From our eyes they're neglecting to follow the spirit of a policy. From their eyes, they're following it to the letter of the policy. Perspective.
  - Molitor5901 2y ago
    AFAIK you are required to follow the letter of the law, not the spirit. Whatever spirit moved the legislature into approving a law is secondary to the actual wording of the law. If congress wanted people to follow "the spirit of the law" then they should have made the law more explicit, instead of leaving it up to the FDA to decide what's the right spirit to have.
    - wombatpm 2y ago
      For my friends everything! Fir my enemies the law!
  - zeroonetwothree 2y ago
    Presumably the majority of people that don’t have sesame allergy would prefer to pay less for bread so I’m not as clear that “our” and “their” are different here.
- stoperaticless 2y ago
  I like sesame. Should sesame be banned world wide because 0-5% are allergic to it? (I assume: no) Can company choose to produce sesame products? (I assume: yes) Can company choose solely sesame products, without doing sesame-free stuff? (I assume: yes) If new regulation comes along, and business deems new requirement is unacceptably high, can it pivot to a different market where it can reuse same investments? (I assume: yes) Law can be flawed. (Because people definitely are) Maybe it can be improved? E.g. require random testing, and then say there are 7 seeds in every 100000 of pies.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
derbOac 2y ago
This was on my mind a lot when reading the article. I'm not sure how I feel about this all. The problem with the cancer-causing substance labels is some companies are saying their products contain cancer-causing substances when they clearly do not. At this point the label almost doesn't mean anything anymore because you can't tell if they're just putting it on there to prevent lawsuits, or because it actually does. So I could see a regulatory agency issuing fines for false labeling. It dilutes the meaning of the labeling. On the other hand, if there is a company where some contaminants might be present, and they don't want to bother selling their products to people with allergens, I can see why they might be honest and say something like "this product may contain X" or "this product was manufactured in a facility where X is sometimes present". It's sloppy in terms of allergen cross-contamination but I can respect their decision to be sloppy and honest. The tricky part is when one morphs into the other, or where you draw the line. As an exercise, consider a company that just prints on its ingredients label "this product may contain..." and then just lists all the ingredients of all the products they make, or might be in the facility. That too would be abusing ingredients labels but would in fact technically be true. At some point someone has to call nonsense and where that is I'm not sure.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  The problem is that naive lawmakers/voters believed that forcing companies to say “may cause cancer” or “may contain allergens” would be enough to cause customers to flee or enough to shame the companies into changing their products, but in reality, companies feel no shame and just happily add whatever labels they need to and continue to sell their shit. Forcing disclosure doesn’t stop companies from doing bad things they have to disclose.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    No. It's because the sesame labeling law was lobbied by Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) [0] who are funded by the National Peanut Board, the National Dairy Council, and a number of Soy product manufacturers [1]. Essentially, the sesame law made it mandatory to label for sesame like you would for Dairy, Peanuts, and Soy. It was a blatant lobbyist attempt that backfired. [0] - https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/how-fare-advocates-helped-pass-faster-act https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/how-fare-advocates-hel... [1] - https://www.foodallergy.org/corporate-partners https://www.foodallergy.org/corporate-partners

heavyset_go 2y ago

Companies aren't dogs, companies have obligations that they need to fulfill and they're choosing to neglect them.

starttoaster 2y ago
> Companies aren't dogs Metaphor, but sure, quite literally they're not dogs. Very true. > companies have obligations that they need to fulfill and they're choosing to neglect them. From our eyes they're neglecting to follow the spirit of a policy. From their eyes, they're following it to the letter of the policy. Perspective.
- Molitor5901 2y ago
  AFAIK you are required to follow the letter of the law, not the spirit. Whatever spirit moved the legislature into approving a law is secondary to the actual wording of the law. If congress wanted people to follow "the spirit of the law" then they should have made the law more explicit, instead of leaving it up to the FDA to decide what's the right spirit to have.
  - wombatpm 2y ago
    For my friends everything! Fir my enemies the law!
- zeroonetwothree 2y ago
  Presumably the majority of people that don’t have sesame allergy would prefer to pay less for bread so I’m not as clear that “our” and “their” are different here.
stoperaticless 2y ago
I like sesame. Should sesame be banned world wide because 0-5% are allergic to it? (I assume: no) Can company choose to produce sesame products? (I assume: yes) Can company choose solely sesame products, without doing sesame-free stuff? (I assume: yes) If new regulation comes along, and business deems new requirement is unacceptably high, can it pivot to a different market where it can reuse same investments? (I assume: yes) Law can be flawed. (Because people definitely are) Maybe it can be improved? E.g. require random testing, and then say there are 7 seeds in every 100000 of pies.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

derbOac 2y ago

This was on my mind a lot when reading the article. I'm not sure how I feel about this all. The problem with the cancer-causing substance labels is some companies are saying their products contain cancer-causing substances when they clearly do not. At this point the label almost doesn't mean anything anymore because you can't tell if they're just putting it on there to prevent lawsuits, or because it actually does. So I could see a regulatory agency issuing fines for false labeling. It dilutes the meaning of the labeling. On the other hand, if there is a company where some contaminants might be present, and they don't want to bother selling their products to people with allergens, I can see why they might be honest and say something like "this product may contain X" or "this product was manufactured in a facility where X is sometimes present". It's sloppy in terms of allergen cross-contamination but I can respect their decision to be sloppy and honest. The tricky part is when one morphs into the other, or where you draw the line. As an exercise, consider a company that just prints on its ingredients label "this product may contain..." and then just lists all the ingredients of all the products they make, or might be in the facility. That too would be abusing ingredients labels but would in fact technically be true. At some point someone has to call nonsense and where that is I'm not sure.

ryandrake 2y ago
The problem is that naive lawmakers/voters believed that forcing companies to say “may cause cancer” or “may contain allergens” would be enough to cause customers to flee or enough to shame the companies into changing their products, but in reality, companies feel no shame and just happily add whatever labels they need to and continue to sell their shit. Forcing disclosure doesn’t stop companies from doing bad things they have to disclose.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  No. It's because the sesame labeling law was lobbied by Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) [0] who are funded by the National Peanut Board, the National Dairy Council, and a number of Soy product manufacturers [1]. Essentially, the sesame law made it mandatory to label for sesame like you would for Dairy, Peanuts, and Soy. It was a blatant lobbyist attempt that backfired. [0] - https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/how-fare-advocates-helped-pass-faster-act https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/how-fare-advocates-hel... [1] - https://www.foodallergy.org/corporate-partners https://www.foodallergy.org/corporate-partners