[maxerickson]

They are saying to play by the spirit of the rules instead of working the ref on the letter of the rules.

But businesses could give a fuck about anything other than their current margin.

Putting it another way, the FDA put forth a regulation intended to make the lives of a certain group of people better, and the response was to figure out how to not bother with that.

[causality0]

You have a legal duty to not poison people by telling them there aren't allergens in their food when there might be. You don't have a legal duty to create a hypoallergenic product line. Regulations exist to protect your rights, not make your shopping experience more convenient.

[itsoktocry]

What's an allergen? Or, more interestingly, what isn't an allergen?

[maxerickson]

Oh, great, people are living up to their legal duty, I'm so proud of them and totally won't think they don't give a shit about other people if they do the cheapest thing that satisfies the regulation.

[kgwgk]

People are going to buy the cheapest option that satisfies the regulation. If giving shit about other people means systematically buying more expensive options they won't give any.

[maxerickson]

People can buy whatever they want, it's the producers changing their recipe or labeling that demonstrates not giving a shit.

They aren't changing their recipe to make their product better or cheaper, they change it so that they don't have to deal with compliance. That's the not giving a shit.

[brazzy]

They are changing the recipe in order to keep the product cheap, because compliance on this would be really fucking expensive, requiring completely and permanently separate facilities for products that contain each specific allergens and those that don't.

[hot_gril]

Right, the breadmakers don't give a shit about this. That's ok, the breadbuyers like me don't give a shit either.

[jusssi]

This is food. It has so many more quality dimensions than price point and regulation compliance.

[causality0]

If they did start adding small amounts of the ingredients in question, admiration for their malicious compliance would make me more likely to buy their product, especially if it's also the cheapest. They have two options: acknowledge that perfect isolation is an unrealistic goal for their facility, or put aside some money for a legal fund for when their unlabeled food eventually kills someone.

[seanmcdirmid]

If producer A just puts sesame in their products, and that means they can undercut producer B who spends the money to comply with the spirit of the regulation, producer B goes out of business because their expenses are higher.

So what do you expect would happen? Consumers like cheaper rather than higher prices, this isn't a new thing.

[harimau777]

Pass regulations that prevent producer A from undercutting producer B?

[thworp]

Do you have any idea about how expensive it is to audit your entire supply chain to ensure that it is 100% free of allergens? You'd essentially put that cost onto everyone for the benefit of a small minority. I'm sure you can see why that is a political non-starter.

[stoperaticless]

How? Forbid sesame seeds for everybody?

[tuukkah]

Not a bad idea actually. If some people can die of sesame seeds, the rest of us can manage without, sprinkle the seeds on our bread at home or bake our own bread if we can't live without sesame seeds.

[shiroiushi]

If you're going to do that, then you need to ban all prepared foods from having any kind of allergen, because someone might die of it.

That means bread made with wheat is now illegal, because some people are highly allergic to gluten. If you don't want gluten-free bread, you'll have to make it yourself.

Also, you can't have any food with shrimp or shellfish. Peanut butter is now illegal (but you can make it yourself). Pistachio ice cream is illegal.

Not only is wheat bread illegal, but any baked good can't be made with milk either, since some young children are allergic. And you can't substitute soy milk either, since some babies are allergic to that too. Baked goods in your proposed future sound really awful, quite frankly.

Gluten-free baked goods made with potato flour are illegal too, since some people are allergic to potatoes. So french fries are also illegal.

Some other things you won't be able to have either in a pre-made food, or at a restaurant: - celery - carrots - pumpkin - mushroom - onion - garlic - bell pepper - fish (so apparently you want to ban sushi restaurants too)

So I'm curious, in your vision of the future, what exactly do people eat? Beef and lettuce for every meal?

[tuukkah]

Nice collection of straw-men, but elsewhere in discussion it has been made clear how the situation with sesame in bread is not comparable to your cases.

[netmare]

If A can die from sesame seeds and B can't and the A-to-B ratio is something like 1:1e+6, doesn't it make more sense for A to bake their own bread instead?

[tuukkah]

"Bake your own bread" - does not solve the situation when you want to travel, eat out etc.

Most bread types don't contain sesame seeds so why let the sesame seeds contaminate them and cause life-and-death situations?

Proposed legislation: allow large-scale production and sales of sesame seed bread only if you produce and sell more sesame-free bread.

[dialup_sounds]

Apply that logic to more common allergens like wheat, eggs, milk, or soy.

[tuukkah]

Why? The cases are very different regarding different allergies, allergens and product categories.

[mhb]

Making food more expensive might have consequences.

[seanmcdirmid]

You aren’t wrong, but it isn’t workable. Regulations can become very specific to prevent loopholes in compliance, but to the point that the government is just driving the business and it might well be socialized.

[Ferret7446]

Like how we passed regulation to get to this point? And we will pass regulation for the new loophole created by this regulation, right? And we'll keep doing this, as the overhead to comply with regulation gradually increases and prevents small competitors from entering the market as they cannot afford to meet the regulation overhead? Of course, we will address this problem with new regulation.

[maxerickson]

I totally expect people to be assholes about it, don't worry. That's what I'm getting at, people are assholes.

Should we be proud and happy about that? Apparently.