[forgetfreeman]

Eh, this seems like a pretty bullshit argument on the part of manufacturers though. My expectation for a food prep area is that I should be able to safely eat off of any surface. This level of cleanliness should eliminate any contaminants from the environment bigger than airborne dust and given how relatively cheap air filtration equipment is a case could be made there as well. In any case sesame seeds are a hell of alot bigger than dust so there's no great excuse to have them wandering from one product line to another.

[NaOH]

There aren’t food prep areas when it comes to manufacturing at this scale. There are silos, storage tanks, essentially duct work to transport ingredients from bulk storage to production, and large-scale machinery which is designed to minimize exposure to the environment and people while in use. That’s putting aside the equipment and facilities used to acquire ingredients or store products after production.

Yes, all of this equipment is also designed to be cleaned and sanitized, but these are large surface areas covering large distances. And we’re talking about one little sesame seed which can’t be easily detected if it somehow makes its way into a product, unlike, say, the metal detectors all finished goods pass through to ensure no metal object found its way into something.

Spending time in facilities like Bimbo operates will disavow someone of the idea that the work a company like that does is akin to what happens in restaurants or catering facilities. These are factories where product assembly happens to involve edible parts.

[pfannkuchen]

Thank you for the mental image of a loaf of bread getting busted trying to smuggle a machine part out of the factory.

[michaelt]

The food industry has special industrial X-ray machines so that if the hamburger meat grinding machine has a blade snap off, you don't send a customer a hamburger with a blade in it.

[throwup238]

You joke but product theft is always a major concern.

[forgetfreeman]

So we're saying what, in an era of atomic scale manufacturing it isn't possible to design a manufacturing line that segregates macro-scale ingredients? I've spent time in pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. They don't routinely floof active ingredients between capsule lines. Corraling shit the size of a sesame seed is trivial in comparison. So yeah, this is still bullshit.

[krisoft]

> They don't routinely floof active ingredients between capsule lines

But isn’t that what we read about regarding athletes being acused of cheating because of cross contamination in pharmaceutical manufacturing?

“Generic Pharmaceuticals as a Source of Diuretic Contamination in Athletes Subject to Sport Drug Testing”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8635962/

[quickthrowman]

It’s entirely possible, all you need is a separate factory to make products for 0.3% of the population, in every geographical region you bake bread in.

The reason they aren’t doing it is cost, not practicality.

[Nasrudith]

Aren't the two basically synonymous? Cost is a proxy for the amount of effort put into it.

[shmeeed]

Possible, yes. Economical, no.

[forgetfreeman]

Uneconomical to corral macroscopic ingredients several orders of magnitude larger than dust? I'm unconvinced although I'm certain that's the line of rhetoric being advanced by manufacturers.

[jtbayly]

I can’t wait until bread costs the same as drugs per gram. /s

[forgetfreeman]

I can't wait until a bread manufacturer tries to advance the argument that the same level of contamination mitigation infrastructure required to contain sub-micron active ingredient powder has to be brought to bear to keep sesame seeds from moving around at random.

[isoprophlex]

> These are factories where product assembly happens to involve edible parts.

And looking at the picture of the """bread""" at the start of the article, it shows.

That's not bread, that's an industrial product.

[Animats]

Yes, and this is what a bakery for basic loaves of bread looks like.[1] And here's one for "artisanal" bread, from the same manufacturer.[2] Notice how similar the processes are. The "artisanal" plant has a few more stations, including a "decoration" station where the sesame seeds, etc. go on top. Artisanal plants tend to be more reconfigurable, the same line can produce a few different products.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvPTD2RF5KM

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWTVkL-f91w

[ralferoo]

Interesting videos.

Probably the key thing for me is how much of the process in both videos is just exposed to normal air. If sesame is as deadly as some people in this thread are making out and a few grains of sesame dust could kill you, then absolutely the current warning labels seem justified if any loaves are made in a factory that has sesame anywhere. Perhaps there's some in the air, perhaps a worker has some dust on their clothes (which could even affect them travelling to a different factory or even location). What next? Should we demand completely sterile factories and for all the workers to wear full hazmat suits?

It does seem simpler to just allow the labeling to continue with the warning about the possibility, and people with allergies can choose to not eat bread at all, or find a baker who can offer a guaranteed sesame free product. It'll probably cost more to make that guarantee (less demand, limited product range, etc), but if people with allergies want bread so badly that it's worth paying the extra, there will be a sustainable business opportunity. Maybe only artisanal bakers will bother, maybe only those owned by people with the allergies themselves, but if there's an overlap between how much it costs to make that guarantee and how much someone is prepared to pay, somebody will make that business. But if you have an allergy, and you're not prepared to pay for what it costs to protect yourself, why you should expect everyone else to subsidise that?

I say this as someone with allergies myself. I have developed allergies to some common fruits (weirdly, ones I used to love and have eaten for most of my life) that have given me reactions ranging from itchiness to fairly severe throat swellings. I deal with that by not eating those fruits or things containing them. There's plenty of other food in the world that I can have instead.

[alephnerd]

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-hel...

[1] - https://www.foodallergy.org/corporate-partners

[shiroiushi]

Yes, almost all food these days is an "industrial product" at some point in the pipeline. That's the reality of living in an industrial society and not an agrarian one.

[lukan]

Not at all. Even in this industrial society it is possible to buy raw ingredients and cook yourself and many people do it.

(and as far as I know, many studies imply that is healthier, than heavily processed food, filled with conservatives, additives and whatever)

[shiroiushi]

>Even in this industrial society it is possible to buy raw ingredients and cook yourself and many people do it.

Those raw ingredients are also "industrial products". Did you think that bag of flour you bought was hand-milled by someone after they hand-picked the wheat? It came from a factory, just like most store-bought bread.

[lukan]

Actually one can buy hand milled flour, but I do not think that makes sense. I am not against big machines (and milling has not been done by hand for centuries). I am against adding all kind of things into my food, that happened to not be proofen cancer inducing yet.

[quickthrowman]

Any flour you purchase was processed by Cargill, ADM, or Bunge (or on their behalf). I’m sure there’s artisan grains available for a premium price, but virtually all commodity crops are processed by the big 3 agribusinesses.

It is impossible to avoid industrial food processing unless you grow it yourself.

[josefx]

> There are silos, storage tanks, essentially duct work to transport ingredients from bulk storage to production

How hard would it be to just have a set of sesam free plumbing for specific products? I mean they also manage to keep a separate sewage line, right??

[michaelt]

I don't know about Bimbo Breads specifically, but I do know a lot of manufacturing plants will produce several products on the same production line, in batches.

A brewery that produces several types of beer would have separate fermentation tanks for each one - but might only have one bottling/canning line.

I wouldn't be surprised if bread manufacturing was similar - you might produce 8 different types of bread, but only have one bagging machine.

Of course the entire plant would be deep-cleaned once per day. But you'd be switching between products 8 times per day, so there's not time for an hour-long cleaning every time.

[AnotherGoodName]

Hmm I wonder how good the us legal system is if a person insists they fell ill eating a product without a warning label and it goes to a jury trial?

There will undoubtedly be a focus on ‘whether you can be 100% sure there was no sesame dust in the air’. Without a perfect vacuum clean room (that doesn’t really exist) you can’t be. As in even if you’re really fucking clean your probably losing the case in the American legal system.

Fuck it my bread is made with a sprinkle of sesame flour and is known to contain potential carcinogens identified by the state of California.

[moregrist]

As a parent of a child with a severe sesame allergy, you clearly don’t understand food allergies and how severe they can be.

If my child ingests sesame, they go into anaphylactic shock and without an epipen administered in minutes they will die.

There are definitely questions of how to best inform consumers that have severe food allergies. But I’ve been really underwhelmed with the dialog here on this.

It would be lovely if HN could keep in mind that for some people, sesame is a life-threatening ingredient. And those people would also like to safely buy bread.

[alwa]

From your perspective, has this shift reduced the number of options you’re comfortable feeding to your allergic child?

I guess what I’m asking is, was the previous situation (label indicating the mere possibility of cross-contamination) enough of a risk that you avoided those foods, before this labeling shift?

And has the availability changed post-regulation as far as brands or bakeries that lean in to being conscientious about this risk?

[moregrist]

From my perspective, it’s been a mixed bag.

On the one hand, sesame is clearly listed on major brands so we can buy bread with more confidence. Before, there was always some hesitation when shopping with unknown brands. Even known brands can change formulations, which could make shopping feel very uncomfortable.

On the other hand, some brands have started intentionally adding sesame. That sucks. But it may also indicate that a real cross contamination risk has always existed.

It’s important to note that not all brands add sesame, and that not all store brands add sesame. So it hasn’t meaningfully reduced our choices. And I do hope that brands intentionally adding sesame will reconsider at some point.

[lisper]

> If my child ingests sesame, they go into anaphylactic shock and without an epipen administered in minutes they will die.

Please excuse my skepticism, I am asking this out of a genuine desire to become better informed: how can you possibly know this? Unless you happened to have an epi-pen handy the first time your kid ever ate a sesame seed, which seems unlikely, then if this were true would not your kid have died then and there?

[doctor_eval]

I can’t answer for sesame, but my kid has an allergy to a specific nut, that we discovered after mum picked baby up after handling said nut, leaving bright red welts on their little body. No ingestion required.

Subsequently, immunology department, skin prick tests to identify the specific culprit, “risk of anaphylaxis” posters, and an Epipen - with risk factor based on the size of the reaction, in millimeters, to the skin prick test.

[lisper]

Thanks.

[shiroiushi]

Yep: instead of a bunch of downvotes, that was exactly the right kind of response to your question. Those of us who don't have these kinds of allergies (or kids with them) would have no clue about this kind of thing, and that response summed it all up very well.

[pvaldes]

Was the nut cashew?

[doctor_eval]

No, it was walnut and pecan (they are related, it turns out). Some other minor reactions but those were the big two.

[tiltowait]

With some allergies, they become more acute on subsequent exposures. Think first time you break out in welts, second time you have a hard time breathing, third time you die.

[itsoktocry]

Good question.

The idea that coming into contact with a seed could kill you seems insane and terrible. Yet where are all the people dying of this? Is the implication that our prevention is so good we are somehow avoiding it? I'm also skeptical.

I'm not denying that it exists, but common knowledge (you literally can't eat peanut butter at school) indicates it's so common. How could this be?

The solution is to stock epipens everywhere.

[throwup238]

> Yet where are all the people dying of this?

Based on this metastudy titled Epidemiology of anaphylaxis in Europe, they found the prognosis was:

> Case fatality rates were noted in three studies at 0.000002%, 0.00009%, and 0.0001%.

That's among all cases of anaphylaxis, so the answer is "they are almost nonexistent". It's not even a rounding error. Something on the order of a few dozen people per year for a country the size of the UK and from what I can tell, most of those are due to administration of IV medication where the allergy was previously unknown and much more severe.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/all.12272

[kortex]

I think part of the confusion is that food anaphylaxis isn't automatic death sentence in all cases, but the risk is that it could be. I have a peanut allergy and carry an epipen. I've been exposed ~5 times in my life but it never was severe enough to deploy it, and instead took benadryl and closely monitored it with epipen in hand and 911 on speed dial. I also know people who eat their allergen occasionally because they just get hives and it's worth it as a treat, and I know people who had severe asthma in minutes after a cross-contamination and needed the epi.

It's just game theory. It's like asking how many metaphorical empty barrels do you want to add to your Russian roulette revolver before you are willing to risk it, the reward being basically "ordinary food". Oh and the risk can suddenly one day go from just causing hives to severe anaphylaxis at a much smaller dose.

Most people who learn of a sensitivity (I learned in elementary school after breaking out in hives from doing art involving peanut shells, the horror to think this is something schools just did!) just don't want to know that badly how dire their allergy is and assume it's life threatening, because it's not worth it to be cavalier.

[jimbob45]

There are kits now with allergens that you can feed your kid to test for this kind of thing[0]. The idea is that you have them eat it in the parking lot of a hospital and see what happens.

[0]https://readysetfood.com/products/stage-1-2-bottle-mix-in

[lisper]

OK, but surely not everyone does this?

Here's the thing: if there really are kids out there who will drop dead within minutes of eating a sesame seed, surely some of them will discover this the hard way, i.e. by accidentally consuming a sesame seed and dying. But not once have I ever heard a news report about a kid dying this way, and I can't find any data on how many people die this way. I also can't imagine any reliable way that one could possibly learn that your allergy is so severe that a sesame seed will kill you without having at least some people actually die.

All this leads me to suspect that the belief that sesame seeds are potentially deadly in small doses might not be solidly grounded in facts.

[LorenPechtel]

Actually, we can estimate odds even with zero deaths.

The thing is regardless of the trigger anaphylaxis is anaphylaxis. The severity differs, the mechanism is the same. We can see the distribution of reactions and estimate the number that will be lethal even if we have no examples.

(And I rather suspect that a fair number of the lethal cases don't get diagnosed. I don't believe autopsy will reveal what set it off unless the contaminant is obvious.)

[moregrist]

It’s usually the second exposure that causes the reaction.

There are plenty of anecdotes of close calls. EMTs carry epipens for this reason. And occasionally it’s tragic when one is not administered in time.

But ingestion is not the only way to learn that you have a severe allergy. Skin contact with the allergen with usually result in bad hives. When this happens with a child, it’s scary and tends to result in an appointment with an allergist, who can assess the severity with skin tests and blood draws.

I had an epipen on-hand when my child ate hummus the second time, and started going into anaphylactic shock. They had had a bad hive reaction to spilled milk, so we had already seen the allergist for milk allergies, which were severe enough to warrant an epipen.

It was a terrifying event, and I am very thankful that we had the epipen and that my child did not have a second wave reaction.

[lisper]

Thanks. I'm glad your kid is OK, and sorry that you need to deal with the added stress.

Still it leaves me wondering where is the data on the kids who have this happen to them whose parents don't happen to have an epi-pen on hand. You'd think there would be some deaths, and you'd think someone would be keeping track of them, but I can't find the numbers on this anywhere. Seems weird.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

No, you don't have a right to buy bread in your situation. Take responsibility, assume labels lie, and bake all the bread yourself.

[sakjur]

If we’re starting going down this path, what if the flour also lie and mix in an unknown quantity of sesame? Should families have to devolve into living in a feudal pocket society?

I think it’s fair for the regulator to be hard on lying on food labels. That seems like a rather low bar for a functional modern society. As consumers, we can also ask companies to provide additional services. There’s nothing irresponsible or entitled in politely asking for accommodation from providers or empathy from peers.

And unless there’s an edit that I’m missing, the person you’re responding to explicitly expressed a desire rather than tried to claim a right.

[dotancohen]

I would argue that they have the _right_ to buy bread, but they also have the _responsibility_ to ensure that their child does not eat affected (or possibly-affected) bread.

These labels shift the responsibility. And that is a responsibility that the companies making bread just are not willing to take.

[LorenPechtel]

And how does this farce of a rule help you child? Not at all!

You think that somehow this will make sesame-free bread. Nope, that's too expensive. They responded to the FDA's garbage by throwing a pinch of sesame in. Apparently some manufacturers didn't manage to throw enough in, or perhaps the detect threshold isn't sensitive enough. Throw that pinch of sesame into enough bread and it might not be detected even though it's there.

If there was an adequate market for sesame-free bread you would already see it. Nothing is stopping a manufacturer from opening a sesame-free bread factory--that is, nothing but a lack of demand.

[moregrist]

Honestly, the rule has been helpful to my family. We now clearly know whether a product contains sesame or not. Previously, it wasn't always listed, or had vague potential cross-contamination warnings, which are hard to parse.

So, in my eyes, it's not a farce of a rule at all.

> If there was an adequate market for sesame-free bread you would already see it. Nothing is stopping a manufacturer from opening a sesame-free bread factory--that is, nothing but a lack of demand.

Dude, chill. You must not read labels looking for sesame when you buy bread.

There are manufacturers that make sesame-free bread. I buy it regularly from normal supermarkets in the normal bread section.

[LorenPechtel]

If you have a deadly allergy a cross-contamination warning means don't eat it. They aren't hard to parse at all.

You got slightly clearer labels, a lot of people went from being able to eat it to not being able to eat it.

I will admit that I do not look at bread labels--all bread falls into the unpleasant reaction category for me.

[infecto]

I know its easy to blame the manufacturers but I don't believe they are entirely at fault here. Its not so much the size alone but that in these facilities they are not being cleaned after every run. Certainly the products that spoil are getting sanitize appropriately (eggs, dairy etc) but uncooked grains I suspect have a much larger time line for cleaning.

[Ekaros]

Lot of these things are dry ingredients. So they do not even need same level of standards as anything wet. They keep well enough and earlier in manufacturing chain things are much worse. Just think all of the places your average wheat grain go trough from field to finally being baked... Many parts do not have the strictest standards of steam cleaned stainless steel...

[creer]

That's really not true. In both ways, too. It's not realistic.

In the specific case of gluten-free vs normal flour, you might have a clean, safe kitchen but flour flies everywhere and it doesn't take much. The solution for a gluten-free kitchen is to only use gluten free products. I know of a restaurant that offers both gluten free and plain pizza crust and people who need to should know what that means: they try but it's not.

It's also not realistic as to "safely eating off surfaces". That's the goal and that's what test kits test for - but that's the point: the test kits are there because it's hard to achieve (and excess will result in contamination from cleaning products.)

[kortilla]

Pre-baked grain is not handled with those standards

[rising-sky]

Indeed and pretty disingenuous from the bakeries. Mislabelling as containing allergens when it does not can lead to a false sense of security or comfort in consumers. In that they may potentially consume an item and discover that it is labelled for the allergen, and subsequently assume that the lack of a reaction indicates tolerance. Potentially, leading them to consume accurately labelled products expecting the same non-reaction

[brookst]

If I'm understanding you correctly, the concern is that someone who has e.g. a peanut allergy will eat product A which is labeled as containing peanuts despite not having any, and then decide they must not be allergic so they can eat product B which is also labeled as containing peanuts but actually has them, and have a bad outcome?

This seems a stretch. If the person is eating food labeled as containing an allergen, do we really care whether it is product A or B that produces the bad outcome?

[dboreham]

Disagree. There's a concept of people "growing out of allergies". I think it's at least plausible someone could eat product A without checking the label, then subsequently read the label and assume "well I must have grown out of that allergy" and hence proceed to eat product B.

[zeroonetwothree]

Allergies depend on the dose so I don’t think most people would think like this.

[ajsnigrutin]

Usually those are labeled as "may contain traces of....".

[itronitron]

Yeah, and that is just as bad as "contains... " for people that have severe allergies.

The trend for most companies is just to put "may contain traces... " or "manufactured in a facility that also processes... " which will prevent me from buying from those manufacturers.

[ralferoo]

That's the intended objective. They don't want you buying the food if there's a potential risk you're going to later sue them if whatever minuscule probability of a contamination event does in fact happen to occur.

They have judged that as a market segment, the revenue they can get from selling guaranteed sesame free products is less than the cost of producing it. Other manufacturers may decide it's worth it if they price their bread higher, and then the issue becomes whether you are prepared to pay the price they are asking to cover the increase costs.

Remember at the end of the day, what you eat is a choice. There's no reason why you have to eat bread, but even if you choose to eat it, making the choice to buy more expensive hand-made bread rather than the ultra-processed mass-produced stuff is usually much better for your body in ways other than just not containing sesame.