Restaurants often don’t know what’s in their food, largely because of cross contamination. Baked goods are a particularly dangerous area for those with food allergies, due to how carelessly ingredients like flour is processed.

In recent years, we’ve seen an uptick in brands use major allergens as cost-saving filler in their products. Those are intentional contamination. The incidents of accidental contamination are much higher, as much equipment is shared in the processing and packaging if various products, equipment which is exposed to major allergens.

Society needs to start taking this seriously and place rigorous controls on how food containing major allergens is processed and handled. Products and ingredients that contain major allergens should be carefully regulated and inspected, and should not be reused for products that do not contain those allergens in their recipes. We also need to be more stringent about preventing companies from using allergens as fillers. The carelessness with which our food is handled is shocking.