Carcinogenic Coffee?

California: Where common sense goes to die.

Prop 65 requires warning labels on products containing chemicals “known to the State of California to cause cancer.” Violations are enforceable by private citizens who can reap a hefty bounty for successfully suing (or even for negotiating settlements).

A former California Department of Consumer Affairs director recently noted how “bounty hunter shakedowns of businesses have become the norm.” This spring a snack vending company received a $60,000 legal shakedown warning over the potato chips it sells.

The whole idea of “known … to cause cancer” has become vague and watered-down. For the overzealous (who stand to make just as much money as a principled lawyer), “known” could be as wishy-washy as a single poorly designed study howing a vague link.

A chemical called acrylamide, for example, has long been in Prop 65’s crosshairs. Regulators added it to the law’s initial hit list in 1986 because it sometimes turned up in drinking water. Twenty years later, scientists identified it in cooked vegetables, French fries, potato chips, and even roasted coffee beans.

It’s present in incredibly small amounts, of course. A person of average weight would have to eat 62 pounds of chips every day, for an entire lifetime, to reach the acrylamide dose that causes cancer in lab rats. Still, warning labels are warning labels.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/27/foodpolitik-laughable-food-initiatives-abound-in-california/#ixzz1QTnJYdtV