I don't think you've understood the, very valid arguement in my opinion, that everything would end up with an unsafe label. In the same way that almost everything you buy either may contain nuts or is made in a factory which might process nuts - a practise which provides exactly zero useful input for the people it's intended to protect.
Why would this happen for things which aren't currently banned? An abundance of caution - better to claim it's potentially unsafe than pay the claims later. Or economics - why pay more for a safe sweetener when you can use the cheap and cheerful one and just label it unsafe.
You're assuming that people would disregard the labels. But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product. Most others don't care if it has traces of nuts or not because nuts aren't going to kill them, so those products find a wide market of people who are perfectly safe eating them.
California says that everything causes cancer because everything kind of causes cancer and their labeling rules are stupid. If the label was only on products with a significant risk of causing cancer from ordinary use, it would be rare and people wouldn't ignore it. In other words, if it was only on the products that would otherwise be banned.
This would only be a problem if you would otherwise have banned lots of things people would still want to buy given a free and informed choice, in which case actually banning them is even worse.
We didn't ban cigarettes, we informed people of the risk:
And that's one of the most addictive products known. Around the same percentage of adults smoke cigarettes and use illegal drugs. So what good is the ban?
> But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product.
I have a nut-allergic friend who has given up on reading the labels and relies on his own common sense, because the labels are on everything now. (Worse, if you look at what's happened with sesame, manufacturers now deliberately incorporate sesame into their recipes so that they can put the warning labels on, because that's cheaper than the risk of selling a product that doesn't contain sesame).
> If the label was only on products with a significant risk of causing cancer from ordinary use, it would be rare and people wouldn't ignore it. In other words, if it was only on the products that would otherwise be banned.
How do you imagine that this might be accomplished? If manufacturers have the choice of a) go through an approvals process b) put a warning label on their product, they're going to pick b, every time.
> We didn't ban cigarettes, we informed people of the risk:
And the result is that smoking has fallen a lot more slowly than predicted and millions of people have died.
> I have a nut-allergic friend who has given up on reading the labels and relies on his own common sense, because the labels are on everything now.
There is a difference between containing nuts and being processed on equipment that also processed nuts. The difference matters more for some people than others.
> Worse, if you look at what's happened with sesame, manufacturers now deliberately incorporate sesame into their recipes so that they can put the warning labels on, because that's cheaper than the risk of selling a product that doesn't contain sesame
This is what happens when you have bad rules.
They have a machine which has processed nuts in the past, it isn't cost effective to remove every trace of nuts from it, so they accurately labeled their product as one processed on equipment that has processed nuts. Maybe the trace amounts aren't enough to matter, but the consequences can be dire so they're cautious. Isn't this supposed to be about safety?
They only added nuts to the product after you prohibited them from being conservative. And they're being atypically conservative because the "dangerous" label isn't applicable to most of their customers who they then don't have to worry about being deterred.
> How do you imagine that this might be accomplished? If manufacturers have the choice of a) go through an approvals process b) put a warning label on their product, they're going to pick b, every time.
Why is the company even involved in the process? They produce a new product and it initially gets a label that says it hasn't been tested, which will rightfully deter customers when most existing products don't have that label. The government performs its testing to check if it's harmful, prioritizing based on which new products are expected to be popular, and once published their results go on the label one way or the other.
If the company wants to get rid of the untested label or not have it present at release they can pay for expedited evaluation and go to the front of the line, but all popular products get tested relatively quickly and so untested products are suspect, and products evaluated as unsafe then have to be labeled as unsafe.
> And the result is that smoking has fallen a lot more slowly than predicted and millions of people have died.
As compared to the times when we've prohibited other substances and people all stopped using them immediately?
> Why is the company even involved in the process? They produce a new product and it initially gets a label that says it hasn't been tested, which will rightfully deter customers when most existing products don't have that label. The government performs its testing to check if it's harmful, prioritizing based on which new products are expected to be popular, and once published their results go on the label one way or the other.
This a fundamental point of misunderstanding. The government in case of the FDA doesn't test products. They just review the documentation that manufacturers submit. In case of medical devices which are similar to an existing approved medical device (a 410k) for instance the FDA charges $21,760 for this review ($5,440 if you are a small business) and under law has to have the review complete within 90 days.
To compare: performing just one of the required tests such as biocompatibility often costs more.
The FDA also doesn't write labels for you. That is entirely your responsibility as a manufacturer and frankly impossible without having complete insight into manufacturing and design.
> Maybe the trace amounts aren't enough to matter, but the consequences can be dire so they're cautious. Isn't this supposed to be about safety?
Safety should be about safe outcomes, not about maximising the number of warnings.
> They only added nuts to the product after you prohibited them from being conservative. And they're being atypically conservative because the "dangerous" label isn't applicable to most of their customers who they then don't have to worry about being deterred.
There's nothing atypical about it. They're finding the cheapest way to avoid liability and they genuinely don't care whether that means "being conservative" or poisoning their customers, and it's not going to result in good outcomes for the customers.
> Why is the company even involved in the process? They produce a new product and it initially gets a label that says it hasn't been tested, which will rightfully deter customers when most existing products don't have that label. The government performs its testing to check if it's harmful, prioritizing based on which new products are expected to be popular, and once published their results go on the label one way or the other.
Presumably you're going to campaign for the massive increase in taxation that would be necessary to enable the government to do testing comparable to what's currently done in any remotely reasonable timeframe? (And some kinds of testing simply can't be done fast - if you want to test for negative after-effects that may take years to show up, there's no way to make that not take years).
> As compared to the times when we've prohibited other substances and people all stopped using them immediately?
As opposed to market consensus on what was expected. And yeah, frankly, banning substances generally does reduce consumption; not to zero, but to significantly less than without the ban.
> But people with allergies don't disregard the labels, they buy a different product.
And sometimes you get people like me, who eat yoghurt without checking the ingredients because you shouldn't need to, only to then find out that for some crazy reason American food companies put beef gelatine into theirs.
For me vegetarian is a choice rather than mandatory, but if you rely on "common sense" people will die, and have died. It's happened with surprise nuts, despite that one being well known.
> And sometimes you get people like me, who eat yoghurt without checking the ingredients because you shouldn't need to, only to then find out that for some crazy reason American food companies put beef gelatine into theirs.
They made a product and told you what was in it. You're not required to read the ingredients first but you have the opportunity to. Are you proposing that we ban beef gelatin?
> if you rely on "common sense" people will die, and have died. It's happened with surprise nuts, despite that one being well known.
But what are you even suggesting here? That you can't make a product with nuts if someone might not expect it, even if you labeled it?
If you're in a cornfield next to a farm road that only sees one truck every six months, common sense says you're not at a busy intersection, but if you step into the road without looking and there is a truck, that's not the truck's fault. You can be cautious all the time or you can take a risk once in a while; it's your choice because it's your life.
It's also not clear how it applies to the topic. If you went to the store and asked for some MDMA and they gave you some MDMA, you are not going to be surprised that the contents is MDMA. That's not why it's banned.
I eat stuff with bones in it all the time, as do most humans. I was a vegetarian for years and the inclusion of gelatin in foods where it isn't immediately obvious was certainly annoying. As was the inclusion of non-vegetarian products in cheese, beer, and sugar. Doesn't change the fact that gelatin isn't generally considered a ghoulish or unusual ingredient -- little kids get served big bowls of it! If you have a special diet you need to read labels. That's what they're for.
There are many possible reasons for being vegetarian or vegan.
If the reasons are specifically ethical in nature (i.e. not limited to environmental or health reasons etc. but based on a concern for the possibility that animals have a rich inner experience and have the moral standing of humans), then it's definitely ghoulish for all the same reasons treating humans as livestock is ghoulish.
When I was a kid, I simply didn't think about it. I also simply didn't think about how some people ate species that I considered pets.
> You're assuming that people would disregard the labels.
People do disregard labels including those with allergies.
> If the label was only on products with a significant risk of causing cancer from ordinary use, it would be rare and people wouldn't ignore it. In other words, if it was only on the products that would otherwise be banned.
Ahh, but the risks are high enough that companies will still put that label on everything unless companies where required to only put such a label on products with significant risk which then gets back to regulators.
> People do disregard labels including those with allergies.
Exception that proves the rule.
The purpose of the law is to protect people who act within reason. If you have an allergy and don't read the label, that's on you, not the company or the government.
> Ahh, but the risks are such companies will still put that label on everything unless companies where required to only put such a label on products with significant risk which then gets back to regulators.
The entire point is that "regulators say you have to label this" and "regulators say you cannot buy this even with informed consent" are two different things.
> “regulators say you have to label this” and “regulators say you cannot buy this even with informed consent” are two different things
They are the same issue, because labels get applied even when not needed which destroys informed consent.
Allergies cover a huge range of sensitivities. People with quite severe allergies can consume small quantities and not notice when someone else with the exact same allergies just in a more severe form would die from consuming it. Thus ‘may contain nuts’ isn’t informed consent what’s needed is a sliding scale of risks not CYA language on basically every package.
> The purpose of the law is to protect people who act within reason.
This is just flat out wrong, and pretty gross.
The purpose of the law is to protect people. Not white people, not land-owning people, not smart people, not literate people, not able-bodied people, not "reasonable" people. People. Full stop.
Assuming people are reasonable is a recipe for disaster, and ablest. Perhaps one day someone you know will get dementia, or have a stroke, or get macular degeneration, or any of the number of ailments that can relieve you of your ability to read and comprehend long texts, lists, and warnings, then maybe you will understand how ridiculous this view is.
> Perhaps one day someone you know will get dementia
To further this point with anecdotes, both my mother and my grandmother had dementia.
Gran started a pot of water boiling, left the room, forgot about it, and thought the subsequent smoke alarm was her neighbours'. Mum stopped being able to count past four, and lost general concept of things existing on the left side of objects from her PoV[0].
When my mum noticed my gran had forgotten to renew her road tax (and noticed this six months after it had expired), she hid the car keys until gran forgot she had a car. When my mum got dementia herself, a similar thing happened.
I hope your argument isn't that only white people can exercise reason.
If you have a mental illness you can go to the store and buy rat poison and eat it. The law doesn't address this by prohibiting rodenticides. If you think you can fly and jump off the roof of a parking structure, the government can't disable gravity.
Acting within reason in that context is getting treatment, which is a whole different set of laws.
My argument is that you are picking a specific group and saying the law is only for them.
>If you think you can fly and jump off the roof of a parking structure, the government can't disable gravity
The law can make it so you have guardrail on your roof if it is publicly accessible. The law can also make you put up suicide guards if it's really a problem, all of my favorite bridge have them now.
> The law doesn't address this by prohibiting rodenticides.
Rat poison has actually been getting more scrutiny lately, the traditional pellet form was banned this year in favor of bricks in the US, and non-professional exterminators are limited to buying it a pound at a time. Also, rats are a real pressing problem that is being handled with rat poison. Without it, we go back to food security problems related to controlling pest populations. The same can't be said in reverse, we don't have a real, pressing problem with an overabundance of safety.
> My argument is that you are picking a specific group and saying the law is only for them.
I'm saying that people can make mistakes and incur the consequences of those mistakes. The only way to prevent this is to remove all choice.
This has nothing to do with whether you have some kind of disability. Have someone read it to you, use a magnifying glass, look it up on the internet with a screen reader, buy it from a store you trust not to carry controversial products, do as you like.
> The law can make it so you have guardrail on your roof if it is publicly accessible. The law can also make you put up suicide guards if it's really a problem, all of my favorite bridge have them now.
Guardrails are for preventing accidents, not purposeful action. You can't convert the entire world into a padded room. Suicide guards are a political maneuver meant to demonstrate something being done when politicians don't want to address underlying causes, not any kind of solution when there are an unending number of other bridges or tall buildings etc.
Their purpose is to prevent enough people from jumping off the same bridge for a newspaper to put a morbid number in a headline, when they should be addressing why those people wanted to jump.
> Rat poison has actually been getting more scrutiny lately, the traditional pellet form was banned this year in favor of bricks in the US, and non-professional exterminators are limited to buying it a pound at a time.
Excellent example of regulation created by the need of legislators to be seen doing something even when nothing needs doing.
Poisons aren't rare. You can also buy a bottle of methanol, or various cleaning solvents, petroleum products, coolants etc. Many over the counter drugs are fatal in high doses.
Someone could drown, in water. Which is also fatal if you drink too much. Or too little.
Danger is everywhere and it's fine.
> The same can't be said in reverse, we don't have a real, pressing problem with an overabundance of safety.
That's exactly what we have. Safety measures with body counts. Mandating inaction in cases of uncertainty is a harm in every case where something is better than nothing.
This isn’t about extremely dumb behavior, this is about extreme consequences for reasonable actions.
If you walk up to a food truck you shouldn’t need to worry about long term mercury exposure from a single lunch. But the same is true if you happen to eat the same item from the same truck for 30 years.
The maximum allowable exposure from food is very different between those two cases. But the second case isn’t unreasonable so that’s what the standard should be set for.
It seems like the main issue here is that the level of "informed" has to scale with the level of danger and surprise. If the product is bread and "wheat" is listed as an ingredient, someone with a gluten allergy can be reasonably expected to suss this out. If the product is a granola bar and it contains shellfish, maybe this should be separately noted and not just somewhere in the middle of the ingredients list. If the product contains unsafe levels of mercury, the words "This Product Contains Unsafe Levels Of Mercury" better be featured at least as prominently as the name of the product.
Do you really have any idea what a body of laws would look like that treated the public as though everyone has "dementia, ... a stroke," and "macular degeneration"?
From what little of various laws I've looked at (with the huge caveat that I'm not a lawyer), I think they are written to assume the general public doesn't know what's going on most of the time.
You are being extremely naive I'm afraid. People with allergies have to disregard labels every day. Almost everything edible in the UK had these labels.
I just looked at the back of the chocolate wrapper I just ate and it "may contain nuts, eggs and peanuts." None of those things are ingredients and the warning is just there to prevent a law suit. My friend who has a severe allergy to eggs and nuts would eat it - otherwise he'd have a very bland diet indeed.
See California and cancer.