It’s not that they’ve added sesame where there was none before, it’s that they’re having to declare that sesame might be there. It’s great news for people with sesame allergies and has no effect on those that don’t.
The law requires you either have no sesame contact at all (as in not even having sesame based products travel on the same belts), or you list sesame as an ingredient.
But you can't just list ingredients that aren't in your food: "travelled on the same belt as sesame" isn't enough. So they actually went and added sesame.
Though it's weird that the FDA don't just allow a 'may contain traces' warning, many countries do.
The reason is that such information is useless. If someone has a sesame allergy, they can not eat the food that "may contain traces" anyway. So actually having a definitive boolean _hasSesame is far more useful information, and will lead to less accounts of confusion.
Just as an example, my son's friend is allergic. Can I, as a parent of a friend, give to this child food with the "may contain traces" label? Will every parent of a friend make the same decision? With the new labeling, the answer is much clearer.
They added it where there was none before. People with allergies to sesame were eating bread at Olive Garden and Chick-Fil-A just fine before this legislation and now they can't.
> Though it's weird that the FDA don't just allow a 'may contain traces' warning, many countries do
The FDA always allowed that. But by naming it a major allergen the "Contain" statement becomes mandatory, and the "May Contain" statement doesn't satisfy that.
they've added sesame where there was none before
If it was obvious it was none there wouldn't be an issue.
we don't know specifically which cases there was no sesame before but we do know there were a lot of them
