eli5: There are labels on certain products saying “x product was produced in the same factory as y product” where y product contains an allergen. Why does it matter that both products were made in the same factory?
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The are keeping people with severe allergies safer because they do not guarantee there is not residue from the allergen. For example made peanut butter then sesame butter.
It’s very difficult to guarantee that cross-contamination doesn’t occur. Sometimes just having a little dust of an allergen present is a problem for people who are allergic to it.
Some people’s food allergies are extremely sensitive. Dust or microscopic particles can move through the air from one machine to another. If you can walk into the factory and smell what they are making, then particles are in the air.
If a manufacturer labels their food as “peanut-free” but the next line over is making peanut butter, there are probably peanut parts/dust getting into the “peanut-free” product.
Even with the best of cleaning and air filtration there’s a chance an allergen can make it form one production line to the next. Also not all production lines need to be cleaned to within an inch of their life between every run so it’s possible some trace amounts of allergen will remain in the production line even if that specific product doesn’t have it as an ingredient.
It’s one of those better to be safe than sorry kinds of things.
It is extremely hard to get rid of all possible material for one food item you produce so nothing ends up in the next produce. Most of the time that is irrelevant but in the case of allergens it can be a huge problem. It can remain on machines, utensils, surfaces, containers or even just spread as dust in the air. A very small amount of allergen can be very problematic for someone that eats it if they are allergic to it. So what they are saying is they can’t guarantee there is no cross-contamination.
Certain ingredients might cause enough dust in the air that it could affect somebody with severe allergies… like the dust from opening a 100 pound sack of peanuts and dumping it into a hopper to make Snickers might waft over to the vat of chocolate being poured over Milky Ways and even tiny amounts of dust might affect somebody. Or Snickers and Milky Ways might get run through the same packaging line. Even microscopic amounts of cross-contamination can affect some people.
Accidents happen. (I’m going to use peanuts as my example food.)
Well, sometimes they’re not accidents, they’re just incidental. If there’s a machine doing something like crushing peanuts in a factory, it’s going to be making a bit of peanut dust. That’s going to float through the air. If some of that dust can land on things related to a different food product, there’s some chance enough of it will be present to make a person with a peanut allergy react.
The rest of it’s just obvious stuff.
A maintenance worker might service a machine that works with peanuts, then service a different machine that doesn’t. If they don’t change all of their clothes, take a shower, and clean all of their tools, some amount of peanut fragments/dust/residue may end up getting into/on the other machine.
Someone might use a cart to carry 100 pounds of peanuts to a machine. Then, absent-mindedly, they fill the same cart with flour and dump it in a different machine. Now peanut shells, dust, etc. could be in that flour.
Two machines might be too close to each other and maybe every now and then a peanut flies between them.
Two workers might be clowning around and throw peanuts at each other.
There’s a bajillion little ways for peanuts to end up in the wrong place. It only takes a little bit to ruin someone’s day or kill them. A lot of the stuff above doesn’t even *sound* like it’s dangerous or irresponsible.
So it’s better for companies to warn people that there is a *chance* some kind of contamination could happen. That way people with the allergy can know even though a particular item doesn’t have peanuts in it, through some chance accident there is a risk. If they know it could kill them, they’ll have to stick to foods made in facilities that have no nuts there at all.
A similar thing happens with gluten. Some places sell gluten-free pizzas. Hooray for people with celiac! However, people who have *really severe* reactions need a lot of extra care. If a pizza with gluten is made on a pan, then their gluten-free pizza is made on that pan, the residue from the pizza before can make them sick. So when you see a place offer gluten-free food, sometimes you’ll see them clarify that all of the food is prepared with the same utensils. That means they’re not *really* safe for people who get sick from gluten, just for people who are on a diet.
This kind of also throws back to religious food laws too. Sometimes peoples’ religion says they must use separate utensils and cookware for cooking certain things. So if they buy food products made in a factory, they also need a promise that the factory uses separate equipment for those things or, in some cases, that certain things never enter the factory. I’ve seen some theories that some of these religious practices *might* have been influenced by some kind of food sensitivity. I’m not sure if I buy it.
Allergies exist on a spectrum. Some people are so allergic that microscopic traces can cause a reaction that could kill them.
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