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Comment by aiauthoritydev | Hacker News Reader

The safest thing to do is to actually add the allergens to some degree and then warn people.

But that’s such a pain in the but for those of us with a mild sesame problem.

If it says “may contain” then I’m fine. If it’s listed as an ingredient then I can’t risk having it.

For people who can’t have any at all you’ve not improved the situation but at the cost of making it significantly worse for people with a mild reaction.

Although by adding small amounts of possible allergens to a bunch of common food items you help reduce the frequency of future generations developing the same allergy. So it's a bit of a mixed bag there.

Or even the currently growing generation - allergies are often not genetic and early exposure can help prevent them.

The FDA doesn't allow "may contains" for possible major allergen cross contamination. If the allergen is listed as "may contain" the FDA still requires all of the same costly manufacturing separation practices.

The FDA should either allow "may contains" labels to be used, or create a new category that can be used.

The article says that is precisely what they did and the FDA found that it violated the spirit of the law.

Or admit the law that was being applied was actually 'the law of unintended consequences'.

They should ban unintended consequences, that'll work out fine.

The class of the anointed will never be able to admit to themselves their hubris.

No where in the article does it say allergens were added. If they were then the labelling could not possibly "misbranded".

From the article:

> Because it can be difficult and expensive to keep sesame in one part of a baking plant out of another, some companies began adding small amounts of sesame to products that didn't previously contain the ingredient to avoid liability and cost.

So yes, to avoid having to prevent cross-contamination, they started intentionally introducing trace amounts of allergens.

Ah genuniely missed that line, though as the FDA states is legal.

That seems like the actions of a psychopath to be honest. I struggle to comprehend that someone would care that much about profit that they would intentionally introduce a "contamination", rather than ensuring a correct labeling and clean environment, making their product safe to consume to those with certain allergies.

Ensuring a "correct labeling and clean environment" is really expensive. I mean, really expensive. It's not going to be practical.

I quite frankly question if that is true. A family member is allergic to eggs, as in "he will die if eggs have been near food he consumes". Local bakers have absolutely no issue producing cakes and bread for events when he asks and the prices difference is negligible.

Because they aren't running a production line. And eggs don't make dust.

Produce an item, clean your utensils before the next time. Minimal cross-contamination issues.

A production line processing sesame will create a certain amount of sesame dust. Ensuring that dust gets nowhere near other production equipment is expensive.

It has nothing to do with profit, as it'll just increase the price of the goods to the consumer.

and lose profit. If they spend the money to run a safe production line and pass the cost on the the consumer they will loose market share to the company that runs an unsafe production line & keeps the price the same. It's also especially expensive if the do it quickly. It's been a few years, so fortunately some of them have actually gotten around to updating their production lines by now. T hey just did it slowly in the cheapest, least disruptive way possible.

Sociopathy is probably a more accurate diagnosis than psychopathy. And corporations are inherently sociopathic. By definition their primary motive is profit and there are often strong incentives on those in charge to ignore ethical considerations. It's probably the #1 reason we have consumer protection, and environmental protection laws.

Safest from a corporate liability perspective, not from an inadvertently killing kids perspective. What you're suggesting is precisely what substantially all brands did with sesame, and it's why my family stopped eating hamburgers and hotdogs for several years...because we were literally unable to buy buns that would reliably not kill my daughter. The bread situation was almost as bad. We eventually found 1 brand available at 1 store and were able to feed her sandwiches once again. Now it wasn't much of a risk for our family because we understand how deadly allergies can be and we read ingredients carefully. But for kids whose parents are less careful, some of them die, particularly when there are zero safe options and you don't know if manufacturers are really adding the allergen or just saying they do for legal reasons(both were common). And it sounds like you may be referring to the common belief & research around early/small dose exposure helping kids avoid/outgrow allergies, but what's often lost in those conversations is that it sometimes works, and sometimes makes the allergies worse or even kills you, and nobody has the faintest clue why or which will happen to you. That's why the research generally includes allergen+medication, because the medication is necessary to avoid accidentally killing some percentage of the patients.

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