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by LorenPechtel 721 days ago
The basic problem here is that there are three categories of people:

Those for whom X is fine/those for whom X is undesirable/those for whom X is deadly.

We used to have three categories:

contains/may contain/doesn't contain.

Draw this as a 3x3 matrix.

Those for whom X is fine don't care, they can eat any row.

Those for whom X is undesirable generally do not care about cross contamination. The risk * loss is low enough not to be important.

Those for whom X is deadly will not eat from the may contain category.

The FDA appears to have declared war on the may contain category. Who wins? Nobody. Who loses? Those for whom X is undesirable who are now no longer able to know that the item is probably fine.

I think they are operating under the fantasy that removing may contains means companies will ensure it isn't there, but that's an expensive endeavor that the marketplace simply doesn't call for.