4 ms·

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 compa

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

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