This feels like it’s going the way of prop 65. To be on the safe side, everything gets the label, thus making the label pointless -it no longer helps differentiating things.
But there is a huge potentially downside for under-labeling e.g. people dying. There is an ethic issue here as well even if we ignore money.
Also, the production pipeline is not 100% perfect. They produce millions of items each year. Even with 0.001% defect / cross-contamination, it could be troublesome.
More importantly, the exec who decides to under-label might end up in jail if people die from their decision.
Basic game theory really. If I'm an exec who is paid millions of dollars a year, I wouldn't risk it. Big deal if I earn a little less.
Unless FDA tips the scale and provides some guarantees, this warning means nothing. If FDA really wants to punish for over-labeling, I'd start adding a really small allergen, so the warning becomes accurate lol.
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.
The vast majority of cases are trace levels of low risk materials. Never mind that in most cases you're facing a lot more risk from natural materials.
What proportion of these labels are false positives?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide
in some foods.
Most everything high on the periodic table is nasty. The few that we willingly associate with are because they are non-reactive enough to not actually pose a threat even if in theory they're harmful. (Consider the use of barium to image the digestive system. They use a form of it that's sufficiently insoluble that you don't get poisoned.)
I’ve definitely seen prop 65 on things that made me pause because nothing about the object (like a food bowl) should give me cancer and often I won’t buy it.
And that the label was probably correct.
I think that p65 warnings are only slightly better than random in terms of identifying risky objects. I would guess they are only applied half the time if the item contains a known chemical, and half the time it contains a chemical, it has no label.
Also, the threshold is so poor, you have no idea if an item is actually dangerous even if it is correctly used.
Last, it is pretty unclear what they mean. When I walk into a p65 building, does that mean I am taking a real risk, or that I shouldn't eat the building because the paint contains lead. Same for the bowl.
When you read a news article, you have to know about the publication before you can contextualize the article.
When you read a restaurant movie review or rating, you have to know what the general average is and trends of the source before you can interpret the rating.
When you read about some food being healthy, you need to know if they mean nutrient wise or calorie wise to contextualize “healthy.”
Just reading hackernews, you know how people on here swing about different issues so when an article comes up on one of those issues, you know how the comment section may perceive the issue.
To me, prop 65 is just another thing that provides a signal if you want to contextualize it.
My point is that both over and under use of the labels is so rampant that you can put very little trust in them.