Comment by Semaphor
4 years ago
> However, such statements are voluntary
That made me wonder, and I looked it up: The situation is exactly the same in Germany, and presumably the EU.
Does anyone know why a) this is not legally required when there's a reasonable chance of contamination and b) why laws are not written in such a way, that "contains traces" is enough if you aren't sure about cross contamination like in TFA's case.
Naively, that seems like it would improve things for everyone?
How long until you end up with Proposition 65-style warnings that products may contain trace amounts of every food product?
Today, if I’m severely allergic, I might assume product X has a trace amount of my allergen. Tomorrow, I might assume the same thing, only now I can read it on a label.
Except what good does that do you if a pinch of "blended allergen" is added to almost everything?
It makes food products continue to be as cheap and available as they currently are for everyone who can tolerate a pinch of blended allergen.
Basically, it does about as much good as the Prop-65 labels do.
(Note that this sub-thread seems to be talking about the "what if we didn't [effectively] make it better for manufacturers to intentionally include the pinch of allergens, but instead just allowed them to label the possibility of trace cross-contamination?")
2 replies →
I assume the thinking is along the lines of "contains traces" or "may contain traces" of long list of allergens would get treated the same way California's carcinogens signage does, i.e. it would be absolutely meaningless. But instead manufacturers actually are adding trace amounts of allergens so if they put those ingredients on the label, it's actually true.
>Does anyone know why a) this is not legally required when there's a reasonable chance of contamination and b) why laws are not written in such a way, that "contains traces" is enough if you aren't sure about cross contamination like in TFA's case.
>Naively, that seems like it would improve things for everyone?
Again per the theme of this article: beware second (later) order effects. What is "reasonable chance of contamination", precisely? Once you start creating legal liability, all the incentives change. In a voluntary situation people may only write it if they're pretty sure it might be an issue, but if it's required and companies are punished if they get it wrong then the natural reaction is to just slap it on everything. If everything simply defaults to "may contain traces" then the notice is essentially worthless right? And someone with a serious allergy to a common food product should just assume that by default anyway.
Which I think points to the real issue, which is that the approach is arguably all backwards. Certified/promised allergen free food, just like certified/promised kosher or a range of other things, are a specialized subset of food in general. This in some ways is similar to white lists vs black lists on the net in terms of dealing with content. Black lists are more appropriate when it's desired to be accepting by default (commonly when there are no or minimal life/safety factors). But it's expected that some objectionable things will slip through and then have to be reacted to after the fact. It prioritizes preventing false positives over false negatives, and it keeps overhead cost and uncertainty on the production side lower.
When something is life/safety critical though, or similarly important, then instead it's better to do the opposite and white list. That prioritizes preventing false negatives: since everything must be explicitly and individually certified, nothing clearly failing criteria will ever appear. But of course this also means that potentially valuable things may get blocked from appearing, there are higher overhead costs, and producers in some cases may feel its riskier since they can't be sure they'll have a chance at all (which also raises cost).
Both are important tools, but for medical products (and serious allergic reactions are a medical issue) it's probably almost universally better to white list. A purely tech example of an ongoing controversy would be "child safe internet": a lot of the efforts try to blacklist the adult general net into being child safe, which both doesn't work and causes major harm to regular adult discourse and expression. I think it'd be better to have approaches such as ".kids" and ".teens" TLDs or similar where nothing can go on that isn't pre-vetted to some standard. Then parents can restrict to those if they wish. That's a whole different discussion though!
> If everything simply defaults to "may contain traces" then the notice is essentially worthless right?
Not exactly. A business that produces no products containing sesame will not have risk of even trace contamination, so it would have every incentive to not include "may contain sesame" on the label.
> Certified/promised allergen free food, just like certified/promised kosher or a range of other things, are a specialized subset of food in general.
Only some kinds of kosher food are "special." Nobody needs to think about whether a raw carrot is kosher; it can't possibly not be. By its plain and obvious nature, a raw vegetable is fine.
Allergies are weird in that a "plain and obvious" production process would probably be fine. A normal breadstick, made at home, would probably not contain sesame flour and thus would be perfectly safe. However, efficient industrial production results in not-strictly-necessary cross contamination and unexpected allergen exposure.
> When something is life/safety critical though, or similarly important, then instead it's better to do the opposite and white list.
Since allergies can lead to deadly-if-not-treated anaphylactic reactions, isn't this an argument for whitelisted ingredients?
>Not exactly. A business that produces no products containing sesame will not have risk of even trace contamination, so it would have every incentive to not include "may contain sesame" on the label.
But that was already the case, that's the point. If a business produces certified/assured allergy free food, then they can advertise that as an explicit product feature, and those who need it (or those buying on their behalf or with them in mind) can then pick it out vs competitors. That's "white list" in action, by default things aren't medical grade, and consumers can be confident in those that claim they are.
>Allergies are weird in that a "plain and obvious" production process would probably be fine. A normal breadstick, made at home, would probably not contain sesame flour and thus would be perfectly safe. However, efficient industrial production results in not-strictly-necessary cross contamination and unexpected allergen exposure.
My understanding from family with serious allergies is that this definitely isn't true. Real effort needs to be made avoiding cross contamination in a home kitchen too, and indeed cross contamination at home is more, not less likely because most people are much more casual and have less space and equipment. Unless it's an allergy sufferers home (or their family) and there simply aren't any allergy ingredients there at all. But that merely makes the home a "dedicated facility" in essence too.
>Since allergies can lead to deadly-if-not-treated anaphylactic reactions, isn't this an argument for whitelisted ingredients?
No? Banning sesame (or peanuts, or dairy, or a vast array of other potential allergens) in general is unacceptable to an overwhelming supermajority of the population. It's not a reasonable accommodation, and in a democracy it's not happening. Whitelisting products is the solution. Ensure that anything labeled as allergen free is, and then that anyone with the need can get access to it.