[geraldwhen]

As a counter example, sesame was recently made a major food allergen by the FDA, which caused many food makers to add sesame to their food.

Adding sesame was easier than following the regulations to assert their foods were sesame free, so now food that used to be safe is now dangerous for anyone with a sesame allergy.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90830854/sesame-seed-allergen-fd...

[bsder]

And for those with a mild sesame allergy, things improved dramatically as they don't have to play roulette with how much "undetectable" sesame is in their food anymore. The amount of sesame is known, quantified, and reliable. Once they establish that a food is "safe", they can buy it going forward.

What did everybody expect was going to happen? That companies were magically going to sterilize their production lines?

[Jochim]

My heart truly bleeds for companies who face the insurmountable task of printing "may contain sesame" next to the rest of their allergen information.

Wheat was already on the major allergens list, the regulatory burden of keeping aerosolised flour from contaminating other products doesn't seem to have been much of an issue.

The article also seems to make the case that sesame allergens were making their way into foods, with presumably disastrous effects but that was fine because companies didn't have to think about it.

The preferred solution to the intentional adulteration of products should be to fine the companies and throw their executives in jail. It might make them more amenable to complying with the spirit of the law. In fact, society would be better off in general if executives went to jail more often.

[SloopJon]

> My heart truly bleeds for companies who face the insurmountable task of printing "may contain sesame"

The reason the regulation, and the commercial response to it, is controversial is that companies cannot simply print "may contain sesame" and be done with it.

"Statements such as 'may contain [allergen]' ... can be used to address unavoidable 'cross-contact,' only if manufacturers ... have taken every precaution to avoid cross-contact"

https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/food-allerg...

This is a counter-intuitive, and presumably unintended consequence of the regulation that sucks if you're allergic, but fining or jailing executives for complying with it is silly. Hopefully, enough other companies will see a competitive advantage in retooling their processes to deliver sesame-free products.

[Jochim]

My mistake. They're simply required to do the same thing the do to ensure their enriched breads do not cross contaminate unenriched breads with milk and eggs, or that gluten free breads aren't contaminated with wheat flour.

> This is a counter-intuitive, and presumably unintended consequence of the regulation that sucks if you're allergic, but fining or jailing executives for complying with it is silly.

They're not complying, they're skirting. People who play these kinds of games are a weight around society's neck. The purposefulness and agency over their actions is what should see them in jail. See the attempts of past Uber executives to obstruct the investigation of their illegal activities for an egregious, and relatively well known example of people who need a stern lesson on how to behave in society.

[s1artibartfast]

I think you need to take a step back and get some perspective if you are calling for Bakers who add Sesame to their ingredients to be jailed.

There's no government compulsion to make sesame free products and should not be in a free Society.

[sgtnoodle]

My understanding is that the recent law does not allow for compliance by simply labeling possible contaminants. If the recipe does not intentionally include seseme, the product must not list seseme as an ingredient, and must not contain any seseme.

So, the insurmountable task is either maintaining completely seseme free manufacturing lines, or cleaning manufacturing lines between recipes to the point of guaranteeing no seseme cross-contamination.

Does it really follow that executives should be jailed for adding seseme to their company recipes? I imagine many of the companies that made this change were previously voluntarily listing seseme as a possible contaminant, but had to stop because of the law.

[Jochim]

> My understanding is that the recent law does not allow for compliance by simply labeling possible contaminants. If the recipe does not intentionally include seseme, the product must not list seseme as an ingredient

My mistake. Since 2004, Major food allergens have come with a requirement that manufacturers take steps to avoid cross contamination. The addition of sesame to the list requires it to be treated in the same way.

> and must not contain any seseme.

The manufacturer must follow "current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs)"[0] as described by the FDA. These should already be in place to prevent cross contamination of the existing major allergens.

> So, the insurmountable task is either maintaining completely seseme free manufacturing lines, or cleaning manufacturing lines between recipes to the point of guaranteeing no seseme cross-contamination.

The insurmountable task is to do the same thing they're already required to do to make sure enriched breads, containing milk and eggs, were not cross contaminating merely leavened products or to make sure that wheat flour doesn't contaminate non-wheat products.

> Does it really follow that executives should be jailed for adding seseme to their company recipes?

Yes. Any executive that added sesame to their product in response to this law should be in jail. I'm tired of executives facing no consequences when they intentionally cause harm in their pursuit of profit.

> I imagine many of the companies that made this change were previously voluntarily listing seseme as a possible contaminant, but had to stop because of the law.

Presumably part of the reason sesame was added as a major allergen was because companies weren't doing a great job disclosing it as an ingredient.

[0] https://www.fda.gov/media/80337/download

[nitwit005]

No one is perfect. They sought to amend the rules after it became clear that would be an issue.

You can go to places where food is essentially unregulated, as even if there are laws, they aren't enforced. I guarantee people will warn you against eating the local food, and those warnings will be from experience.

[sitharus]

Your ‘counter example’ is exactly what we want to happen.

It’s not that they’ve added sesame where there was none before, it’s that they’re having to declare that sesame might be there. It’s great news for people with sesame allergies and has no effect on those that don’t.

[brookst]

That was my first thought, but look at other well-documented comments here. It sure looks like "may contain" is a certification that every possible avenue to avoid "contamination" had been pursued. Which is an open-ended liability. Easier to just add 1% and definitively say it does contain sesame.

[BoorishBears]

No, they added sesame where there was none before.

The law requires you either have no sesame contact at all (as in not even having sesame based products travel on the same belts), or you list sesame as an ingredient.

But you can't just list ingredients that aren't in your food: "travelled on the same belt as sesame" isn't enough. So they actually went and added sesame.

[sitharus]

Yes. Before there may have been sesame, it was a lottery. Now there definitely is or is not sesame, which is what's important to people with allergies.

Though it's weird that the FDA don't just allow a 'may contain traces' warning, many countries do.

[dotancohen]

> Though it's weird that the FDA don't just allow a 'may contain traces' warning, many countries do.

The reason is that such information is useless. If someone has a sesame allergy, they can not eat the food that "may contain traces" anyway. So actually having a definitive boolean _hasSesame is far more useful information, and will lead to less accounts of confusion.

Just as an example, my son's friend is allergic. Can I, as a parent of a friend, give to this child food with the "may contain traces" label? Will every parent of a friend make the same decision? With the new labeling, the answer is much clearer.

[BoorishBears]

Manufacturers going on a sesame flour adding spree to foods that were previously perfectly safe for those kids is going to cause a lot more pain than people irresponsible enough to treat "May contain" as worth risking for kids they don't know well enough to make that call on.

[BoorishBears]

> It’s not that they’ve added sesame where there was none before, it’s that they’re having to declare that sesame might be there

They added it where there was none before. People with allergies to sesame were eating bread at Olive Garden and Chick-Fil-A just fine before this legislation and now they can't.

> Though it's weird that the FDA don't just allow a 'may contain traces' warning, many countries do

The FDA always allowed that. But by naming it a major allergen the "Contain" statement becomes mandatory, and the "May Contain" statement doesn't satisfy that.

[kragen]

this is incorrect

they've added sesame where there was none before

[maxerickson]

The thing driving the regulation is that there is an (small or trace but) unknown amount of sesame.

If it was obvious it was none there wouldn't be an issue.

[s1artibartfast]

So the solution to comply is to intentionally add Sesame to the manufacturing process has the most effective way to meet the regulation. This means that products that previously may have had occasionally low PPM levels of sesame now have a much greater amount intentionally added in larger but known quantities

[kragen]

in some cases there were trace amounts, and in others there weren't, but the absence of sesame couldn't be guaranteed

we don't know specifically which cases there was no sesame before but we do know there were a lot of them