[jjallen]

It’s over regulation to everyone who doesn’t have sesame allergies.

It’s lifesaving to those that do.

Somehow bakeries in Switzerland are doing just fine with sesame being a declared allergen and keeping them separate but American ones just can’t be bothered to handle a life threatening ingredient thoroughly carefully.

[vasco]

It's only lifesaving if you want to risk your life. If I have a deadly allergy I'm staying away from certain food groups and am not going to leave my health in the hands of some crappy labels. Have something else other than bread. That's how many people I know with allergies deal with it and it seems the most reasonable approach. In this day there's so many different foods to eat, its easy to have variety without risking it.

[The_Colonel]

It's not like sesame is used only in baked products. Sesame is used in various candies and desserts, as a seasoning for meat, fish, vegetables, even in drinks. I'm not sure if you can eat healthily by excluding all categories of food where sesame might theoretically appear.

[eppp]

You avoid eating things that are risky by preparing them yourself. Which is what I do for my alpha-gal meat allergy.

[b_t_s]

Risk your life doing what? Eating? All food allergies are deadly. They might not have killed you yet, but every single exposure could be your last. And plenty of people, especially kids, are allergic to 4, 5, 6, 7 major allergens. Maybe you're familiar with adults who have grown out of all but 1 or 2 allergies & know what to avoid. Try feeding a kid who's allergic to soy, wheat, dairy and eggs. Heck, even just soy. Try to put together a week of meals without soy with our modern food supply. Spaghetti:soy. Burgers:soy. Ice cream:soy. Tacos:soy. Sandwiches:soy. The entire soup aisle:soy. What's left, drinking Ensure for every meal? Nope, that has soy _and_ dairy. Robust accurate food labeling is the only way people with several food allergies can eat a remotely normal and balanced diet without playing Russian roulette at every meal.

[kalleboo]

https://www.coop.ch/en/brands-inspiration/diet/intolerances/...

> In Switzerland, there are also the following rules regarding trace allergens when declaring allergens: in the event of possible contamination of more than one gram per kilogram of food, the note "May contain traces of ..." must be included. The limit for sulphur is 10 milligrams per kilogram and for gluten 200 milligrams

It sounds like Switzerland does the same thing the US used to do where manufactures have a lazy cop-out? It doesn't sound any stricter at all.

[robertlagrant]

Making sure there is less than 10mg per kg isn't lazy. It's really difficult.

[jtbayly]

But that’s sulfur.

One gram per kilo for sesame is not hard.

[LorenPechtel]

1g per kg is nowhere near enough to protect against bad reactions. Sounds like Switzerland is making a mostly laughable attempt, not doing much.

I have had a rather unpleasant day due to an unknown contaminant in approximately 10mg of material as part of a day's food. Obviously the contaminant was well under 10mg.

[Leherenn]

I checked the couple of bread products (from Migros) I have at home, and they all say "may contain sesame"? Maybe that's not a representative sample though.

I'm not sure what the difference is, except the US goes one step further and asks "please don't say it may have an allergen if you don't have to". It results in products definitely having the allergen, but is "may contain" any better than "definitely contains"?

[kragen]

well, until now, bimbo's breads were sesame-free, and now they'll presumably have sesame in them. so people in the usa with sesame allergies will have to cook their own bread at home now, unless they're lucky enough to have access to a small artisanal bakery

[lukan]

"will have to cook their own bread at home now"

Serious question as a non native english speaker, is this a correct way of saying it?

I think bread is usually baked in an oven ..

[hahajk]

Baking bread is more correct, but in my experience "to cook" is generic enough to include baking. If someone has something in the oven and I ask "what are you cooking?", it's not weird.

On the other hand, "cooking bread" is like 2/10 weird.

[jjallen]

"will have to bake their own bread at home now" would be the most correct way of saying it IMO (native American)

[kragen]

as a native english speaker, i should have said 'bake their own bread'. it sounds wrong the way i wrote it

[KineticLensman]

Don’t know the actual stats but (UK here) lots of people who make bread at home use a dedicated bread machine

[lukan]

It is still an small oven, not a cooking pot ..

(some bread you can also make in a pan, but you cannot cook bread in my understanding)

[WrongAssumption]

Cooking is just the application of heat. Baking is the application of dry heat. Baking is a subset of cooking.

[lukan]

In german, the literal translation of cooking is "kochen" and that involves boiling things.

[CocaKoala]

What's the difference between baking and cooking in your understanding? You can make bread in a rice cooker, which nobody has ever called a "rice baker".

edit: and a rice cooker is definitely not a small oven.

[lukan]

Cooking involves boiling. Liquids bubbling.

Baking is more of a evaporation.

And the german definition of cooking in the narrow sense is defined like this, but in a broader sense apparently usable for everything with preparing meals.

And I never used a rice cooker, so no idea how to classify that ..

[smohare]

Your intuition is right. One would say “will have to bake their own bread at home”.

[john_the_writer]

It's a scale difference. If you're making bread product for a million people you have a massive factory.. And nuts be there

[portaouflop]

Of course, everything weird and whacky about the US can be explained because it’s just so much bigger - you wouldn’t understand coming from such a tiny country.

[robertlagrant]

The psychology of this comment aside, I don't think any country is so small it can't fit a massive factory in it. Unless you're writing from Vatican City, perhaps?

[portaouflop]

My point was that all countries have big factories but in the US they are somehow unable to make sure no cross contamination occurs.

It’s just impossible because US scale /s

[kalleboo]

The EU allows cross contamination with the same "may contain" labeling as the US previously did.

[robertlagrant]

Are you saying all other countries have zero cross contamination? Can you cite that?

[LorenPechtel]

It's possible for the US to take note of it because of scale. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen elsewhere.

[RugnirViking]

This exact issue happens in all of the EU as well...

[ehnto]

If the regulations had teeth and they weren't allowed to cross contaminate at all, they would build a process that achieves that. Instead they get to put a few labels on there and just accept that they'll lose some customers who are allergic, save some money not building a new process.

[kragen]

you have misunderstood the situation and are suggesting that they enact the regulation that they did actually enact, which is the one that led to this situation

[ehnto]

No I didn't, I understand what they have done to skirt the regulations but that is what I mean. It's so easy to get around the regulations, even the new one, they have no teeth. It's clear the companies are acting in bad faith but there is no recourse.

If it weren't for companies acting in bad faith, they wouldn't have to play regulator cat and mouse. If you removed the regulations altogether, your big bakers would be even more lax with allergens and people would get sick.

[account42]

So what regulation do you want? One that outlaws sesame bread? No thanks.

As long as making sesame bread is allowed while making bread without sesame is prohibitively expensive (because you need to ensure there are not even trace amounts present) it's obvious what most companies will choose.

[WrongAssumption]

You aren’t following what is hsppening. The regulation does exactly that, not allow any cross contamination. So they are adding sesame as an ingredient and labeling it as such.

[ehnto]

I did understand that. The regulations have no teeth not because they lack penalties, it's because they are ineffectual atat achieving the goal.

It is clear what the outcome of the regulations was supposed to be, products with sesame and products without. But they were poorly planned regulations, and the companies are more than happy to work to the letter of the law.

But maybe this is actually fine, because a company willing to cleanly process allergen free product can capture that market segment.

[BurningFrog]

You need to judge over-regulation as it relates to society as a whole.

[sangnoir]

What are your thoughts on mandatory wheelchair ramps, fire extinguishers or AED machines? Most of society won't make use of those either.

[nox101]

I think like everything, there's good and bad. You didn't translate your previous comment into braille so should I sue you for not catering to the needs of my blind mother?

Having wheelchair ramps at corners, especially new ones, big chains, large institutions, seems great. Forcing the new 1 person boutique down the street to spend $250k+ to add every possible accommodation for language and accessibility, doesn't seem so great.

There are tons of stories of effective extortion over "accessibility" issues

[dotancohen]

Actually, I know of at least one HN user who will read his comment in braille. GP provided plain text, which is accessible to braille screen readers. And HN is hailed in accessibility circles as an extraordinarily accessible website, so has a disproportionately large accessibility user base.

[nox101]

The point was supposed to be an example of a possible consequence of rules like this. Not a specific example of an actual consequence.

Your comment also suggests the same solution for the bread. If you don't like that there is sesame in it then you should build a robot to remove the sesames. That's the same as saying "I didn't translate my text for you but you can find some other way to get it translated".

[LorenPechtel]

Yup. Mandating the inclusion of such features in new construction should be required. Retrofitting is another matter that very well might involve pretty much tearing down structures and most certainly shouldn't be required.

(And note that in some cases "new" construction must work with existing constraints. I'm thinking of a sign I saw in Carlsbad Cavern saying no wheelchairs past this point. The loop that was denied wheelchairs contained a pinch point a wheelchair couldn't go through. Man made the path, nature put the rocks there.)

[robertlagrant]

> What are your thoughts on mandatory wheelchair ramps, fire extinguishers or AED machines? Most of society won't make use of those either.

Are you saying these are examples of over-regulation?

[sangnoir]

No.

[robertlagrant]

Why are you mentioning them, in that case?

[sangnoir]

I was asking parent if they thought those items were over-regulation on the basis of the heuristic they provided, without offering any opinion of my own.

[isoprophlex]

A life-threatening allergy is fine and all but will someone please think of the profit margins?!

[akoboldfrying]

Almost every physical object you use in your everyday life, including the building you live in and the clothes you wear, was created by someone who cared about the profit margins on that thing, and didn't care about you personally at all. If you want to propose a different system for creating the stuff in the world, it might pay to look at the success rates of other systems people have already tried.