The FASTER Act backfired: manufacturers now intentionally add sesame to avoid cross-contact compliance costs

The FASTER Act of 2021 added sesame as the 9th major food allergen requiring label declaration, effective January 1, 2023. Instead of reformulating production lines to prevent sesame cross-contact, some major food manufacturers chose to intentionally add small amounts of sesame flour to products that previously did not contain it, then label 'contains sesame.' This keeps them in legal compliance while reducing the number of sesame-free products available to the approximately 1.6 million Americans with sesame allergies. Why it matters: People with sesame allergies now have fewer safe food options than they did before the law was passed to protect them. So a law designed to help allergic consumers has actively harmed them. So families with sesame-allergic children must spend more time and effort finding safe products. So the FDA had to issue updated draft guidance specifically to discourage this practice, diverting regulatory resources. So it revealed a fundamental flaw in how allergen labeling laws are structured — they incentivize disclosure over prevention. The structural root cause is that the FASTER Act requires allergen declaration but does not require manufacturers to minimize cross-contact or maintain allergen-free production lines. The economic calculus is simple: adding sesame flour to a recipe costs pennies per unit, while segregating production lines, deep-cleaning equipment, and testing for trace allergens costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per facility. Without a regulatory mandate to prevent cross-contact, manufacturers will rationally choose the cheaper option every time.