Sesame Allergy in the US: Scale, Severity, and Why the Law Changed

The addition of sesame as the 9th major allergen under the FASTER Act was driven by evidence of significant prevalence and serious allergic reactions. Understanding the scale of sesame allergy in the US provides context for why compliance matters beyond the legal obligation.

How Common is Sesame Allergy?

A 2019 study published in JAMA Network Open estimated that approximately 1.6 million Americans (0.49% of the population) have a sesame allergy. This makes sesame allergy roughly as common as tree nut allergy in the US.

Unlike peanut allergy, which often occurs in isolation, sesame allergy frequently co-occurs with other food allergies — increasing the complexity for allergic individuals navigating food choices.

Severity of Sesame Reactions

Sesame allergy can cause reactions ranging from mild oral allergy symptoms (itching, tingling) to anaphylaxis — a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction requiring immediate epinephrine (EpiPen) use.

A 2020 study found that approximately 27% of sesame allergic individuals experienced anaphylaxis — a rate comparable to peanut allergy severity.

Why the FASTER Act Was Necessary

Before the FASTER Act, sesame was not on the FALCPA major allergen list. Manufacturers were not required to declare sesame in a standardised way. Some manufacturers were voluntarily adding sesame to wheat (gluten) products to avoid having to declare sesame — an unintended consequence of the pre-FASTER regulatory gap.

The FASTER Act closed this gap, requiring clear sesame declaration from January 2023 onward.

New York's State-Level Response

New York's state sesame law (effective November 2025) reflects the state's role as a major food market and its commitment to food safety enforcement independent of federal oversight.

Where Sesame Hides in the Food Supply

One of the most challenging aspects of sesame allergy management is how widely sesame is distributed across product categories that consumers might not immediately associate with it. Beyond obvious products like tahini, hummus, and sesame-topped bread rolls, sesame appears in a surprisingly broad range of processed and packaged foods. It is commonly found in Asian-inspired sauces, marinades, salad dressings, snack crackers, energy bars, and even some medications and cosmetics. For food businesses selling online, this hidden presence creates a real labelling risk if product ingredient reviews are not systematic and thorough.

Sesame can also appear under a variety of ingredient names that are not immediately recognisable to consumers or even to staff managing product listings. Gingelly oil, benne seed, til, and sim sim are all sesame-derived ingredients that may appear on supplier documentation. Tahini, a paste made from ground sesame seeds, is itself an ingredient in many compound products. For Shopify merchants managing a large catalogue, relying on manual label review alone creates exposure — particularly when supplier formulations change without prominent notification and product descriptions are not updated to reflect the revision.

The processing environment adds another layer of complexity. Many manufacturers produce sesame-containing and sesame-free products on shared equipment, meaning cross-contact is a genuine risk even when sesame is not a deliberate ingredient. Under the FASTER Act and New York's state law, precautionary allergen labelling for sesame cross-contact — often phrased as "may contain sesame" — is now a recognised and expected element of responsible food labelling. Merchants sourcing from multiple suppliers need clear, documented processes for capturing and communicating cross-contact information accurately at the point of sale.

The Demographics Most Affected by Sesame Allergy

Understanding who is most affected by sesame allergy helps explain the urgency behind legislative action and gives food businesses a clearer picture of their customer responsibility. Research indicates that sesame allergy is most frequently diagnosed in children, with many cases identified before the age of five. However, unlike some childhood food allergies such as egg or milk, sesame allergy has a notably low resolution rate — meaning most individuals diagnosed in childhood will carry the allergy into adulthood. This persistence makes the sesame-allergic population a significant and long-term segment of the consumer market.

Adults with sesame allergy often report that managing the allergy is more burdensome than managing peanut or tree nut allergy, partly because sesame was not historically declared as a major allergen in the US. This means years of consumer behaviour were built around scrutinising labels for the other eight major allergens while sesame remained an unlisted risk. Adults who immigrated from countries where sesame-heavy cuisines are common — Middle Eastern, East Asian, and South Asian food traditions all feature sesame prominently — may face compounded exposure risks if their community food products are not yet fully compliant with the updated US labelling requirements.

The intersection of sesame allergy with other food allergies is particularly relevant for food businesses marketing health-conscious or allergen-aware products. Because sesame co-occurs with other allergies at high rates, a customer shopping for peanut-free or tree nut-free products is statistically more likely than average to also require sesame-free options. Merchants who market their products with allergen-friendly positioning but fail to clearly address sesame are potentially misleading precisely the customers most likely to be harmed. Accurate, complete allergen disclosure is therefore both a legal obligation and a direct commercial consideration for this segment.

How Ecommerce Merchants Face Unique Compliance Challenges

Brick-and-mortar food retailers can rely on trained staff to answer customer questions verbally, and physical packaging is visible at point of purchase. Ecommerce merchants selling food products on Shopify do not have these fallbacks — the product description page is often the only source of allergen information a customer will consult before completing a purchase. This places a significantly higher burden on online retailers to ensure that allergen information is accurate, complete, prominently displayed, and kept current as formulations change. A product page that was correct six months ago may no longer reflect the current supplier formulation.

Catalogue scale compounds the challenge. A Shopify store selling dozens or hundreds of food products cannot realistically manage allergen information through unstructured manual processes. Product descriptions are often written once at launch and rarely revisited systematically. When a supplier changes an ingredient — substituting one oil for another, adding a new flavour variant, or shifting production facilities — the merchant may not receive prominent notification, and the product page may remain outdated indefinitely. Under both the FASTER Act and New York's November 2025 state law, the merchant selling the product carries responsibility for the accuracy of the allergen information presented at point of sale, regardless of where the labelling error originated.

Structured allergen management tools exist specifically to address this gap. Rather than embedding allergen information in unstructured product description text — where it can be missed, inconsistently formatted, or accidentally removed during a store redesign — dedicated solutions allow merchants to manage allergen data as structured, queryable fields. This makes it practical to audit the full catalogue, identify gaps, and update records consistently when formulations change. It also makes allergen information more accessible to customers, who can filter or search by allergen rather than reading through paragraph-format descriptions for every product they consider. Allergen Matrix is built to solve exactly this problem for Shopify merchants.

What Compliant Sesame Labelling Actually Requires

The FASTER Act established two acceptable methods for sesame declaration on packaged food sold in the US. The first is inclusion in the ingredient list itself, with sesame clearly identified — for example, listing "sesame oil" or "sesame seeds" rather than a generic term that obscures the allergen source. The second method is a separate "Contains" statement placed immediately after or adjacent to the ingredient list, explicitly naming sesame alongside any other major allergens present. Both approaches are considered compliant, but the declaration must be present, legible, and accurate — vague or buried references within descriptive text do not satisfy the requirement.

For New York merchants and those selling into the New York market, the state's November 2025 effective date brings additional enforcement context. New York has historically been an active state in food safety enforcement, and its independent adoption of sesame as a declared allergen signals that state-level inspectors and regulators will be looking for compliance evidence. Merchants who can demonstrate a systematic approach to allergen management — including documented review processes, structured product data, and clear customer-facing declarations — are better positioned to respond to any regulatory inquiry than those relying on informal processes.

One practical implication that is often overlooked is the requirement for consistency across all customer-facing surfaces. A compliant physical package label is not sufficient if the product's online listing omits or misrepresents the same allergen information. For Shopify merchants, every product page, product feed, and export used for third-party marketplaces or comparison shopping engines represents a surface where allergen information must be accurate and consistent with the physical product. Building a single source of truth for allergen data — one that feeds all these surfaces from a central, maintained record — is the most reliable way to ensure that consistency holds as the catalogue grows and evolves.

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