I hear ya, Boo...
on the other hand, I struggle with the notion that the experts have a choice here-- they can get it "right" or they can get it "now" and the two things probably aren't the same thing.
The one probably saves lives by making it easier for 90% of FA people to trust labels and NOT take risks about thing that they think are just CYA (but don't
know are)...
but it may also make it impossible for my DD to eat anything processed again without considering it a food challenge.
I don't know what the right thing is, there. Maybe it just isn't the same thing for all allergens.
My fear is that it isn't the same thing for the entire spectrum of triggering doses, and THAT is an almost insurmountable problem. Freedom for the majority there comes at a price for the minority who are already most likely to die from unavoidable exposure.
They should have the same rights, too.
With all due respect, I disagree with this:
Having a quantifiable level of protein declared by manufacturers gives us a legal protection we do not have today.
Maybe. But it also STRIPS any rights
below that quantified level and gives them a pass to LIE to us about shared lines, just the way Kraft has done to me for years. We were burned by them with mild-to-moderate reactions so many times that we gave up on them entirely, remember? I
know that their jello and marshmallow products are on shared lines with treenut or peanut. I
know it... but they won't TELL me so.
I worry that this says "we only care about the easily accomodated." If it's a FIRST STEP, that's fine. But I don't think that anyone ought to be pretending that this "solves" the larger problem if that is the case.
A permissible threshold, whatever it turns out to be, IS going to present some problems for a small subset of allergic people, and "problems" there is a polite euphemism for dangerous and expensive, or deadly, accidental ingestions that send them to emergency rooms or morgues.
I can easily see the defense saying "Yeah, but the food DOESN'T contain* the allergen. Must have been 'idiopathic' anaphylaxis, then. Not OUR fault... we clean and test our lines, so not possible."
* as defined by "the guideline."
So someone is still going to be 'eat at your own risk' anyway. My problem with this is that the "someone" involved is already at the most restricted and vulnerable end of the spectrum.
People like my DH and I find labeling Byzantine, illogical, and annoying in the extreme. But we don't find it terrifying. DD's allergies (and threshold) make it
terrifying. I don't see this changing that, since people like her supposedly don't exist.
The kinds of initial ingestions that get reported out of studies on desensitization? Frankly, what they are reporting as an "average" tolerated dose
boggles my mind when I consider what we know my DD's threshold to be. If a threshold gets set at 100 mg-- or even 25 mg-- per serving... on the basis of the "fact" that the center of the tolerance distribution is at 250 mg (which it isn't-- this number is made up for the purposes of this post), and therefore "everyone" can tolerate 25mg without danger...
I think that is WRONG if it means that companies will no longer TELL us if something is on shared lines. If they'll divulge it, great... but I'm skeptical, based on my experiences over the past decade.
Would I rather that the food industry gave up? Did nothing at all? No, of course not. But I think that at the moment, actually REPORTING a
level of average contamination is beyond the scope of what is feasible. And
that is likely to be the best (eventual) answer for everyone involved.
Think about that--
M&M's label... peanut tested at 40+/- 10 ppm.
Then people really COULD decide for themselves whether or not that was safe for themselves. On the basis of actual INFORMATION. Unfortunately, without knowing what the actual limit of detection is, it doesn't do any good to say it's "below the limit of detection." Because hey, if my "method" of determination is..... visual? That's whole peanuts per serving. If it's by... LICKING the sample... it's still probably a couple of peanuts per serving, and it's going to vary depending on how spicy or cold the food is when I taste test. Is it 'safe' if I say it's below my limit of detection?
Maybe for someone it is. But for a lot of someone elses, it certainly is not.
Sorry. I don't think that is "getting lost in the science." I think that this particular science isn't yet up to this particular task, and pretending that it
is is dangerous for some food allergic persons. I
want to believe. I do. But I haven't seen anything yet that convinces me that anything good is going to come of this for people like my DD. I'm worried for those people.