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Comment by wpollock | Hacker News Reader

> Strikingly, media reports indicated that some food manufacturers began adding sesame to products that previously did not contain the ingredient following the implementation of the new allergen labeling requirements (Aleccia, 2022; Chatman, 2023; Hughes, et al., 2023).

I have to wonder if they really started adding sesame, or just began accurate labeling?

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Really started adding. This is the key quote:

    Second, we document that, following the enactment of the federal law,
    some food manufacturers engaged in risk mitigation by adding small
    amounts of sesame to products that previously did not contain the
    ingredient. Doing so allowed firms to use the safe harbor provided by
    the allergen labeling rule rather than the ambiguous and non-protective
    “may contain” precautionary labeling. This was most observed in the breads
    and buns category, products for which the prevention of cross-contamination
    may have been more challenging and the likelihood of a recall or litigation
    higher.

Yes, they added sesame.

https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/fare-responds-companie...

Edit: I mean, it's also in the linked article! Just keep reading!

I should have known better than to doubt a random article I read on the Internet, how silly of me, sorry.

I also wondered if they didn't just start labeling as such since they couldn't guarantee that things didn't get contaminated with sesame. "This product is made in a facility where sesame is used"...even if we didn't use sesame in this product being the unwritten part.

That's literally exactly the reason why they did it. They made their food in a factory that also has sesame, and instead of building an entire new factory for only one item (which is expensive and might not even be financially viable in some cases), some companies did exactly that due to the FDA regulation change.

They did that initially, then the FDA started threatening companies that did that, so they responded by actually adding the sesame.

See, that's just stupid on the FDA's part. What did they expect them to do? The FDA's job is not to tell bakeries that they must produce sesame free products. They can only regulate that if there might be sesame in the product, then the product must be labeled as such. If a company wants to make some products with sesame and some without sesame while not being able to guarantee that there is no sesame contamination, then stating that on the label is the best option.

Definitely feels like overreach to me, and slapping the overreaching hand is not a bad thing. That overreach is not valid reason for shuttering the overreaching agency though.

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