California's Lawsuit Machine Strikes Again

Consumer Freedom ^ | January 23, 2004

[calcowgirl]

Proposition 65, California's gift to trial lawyers, has struck again. The inane "Prop 65" requires any product containing one of several hundred "known carcinogens" to bear a warning label -- even though it may be used in concentrations so low that adverse health effects are essentially impossible. Since the law's inception, fearful manufacturers have been forced to slap silly Prop 65 warnings on everything from chainsaws and power mowers to fishing rods. All California consumer products without warning labels, take one step forward ... Not so fast, salmon.

On January 13 the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) teamed up, in their words, to "sue many manufacturers, distributors and retailers of farmed salmon over potentially dangerous levels of cancer-causing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in the fish" under Prop 65. Such scare campaigns are big business in California, as agitators can cash in under Prop 65's "bounty hunter" provision. Plaintiffs stand to collect 25 percent of fines, which can reach $2,500 per violation per day.

Recall that last summer, EWG tried to manufacture another salmon scare, which was promptly put to rest by calmer heads at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As a result of EWG's forays into the food scare arena, the group's "environmental research" has raised more than an eyebrow.

But the fishiness surrounding this recent attack on farmed salmon runs much deeper than greed, bad science, and flawed conclusions. The Pew Charitable Trusts recently funded a $2.5 million study on PCBs and farmed salmon that was intended to scare Americans away from fish. While the study was published in the journal Science, the editors at first refused to run it until the authors "toned it down slightly." Moreover, the study's lead researcher, David Carpenter, candidly remarked to the The Times of London that "there may be some legitimacy in saying the reason they [Pew] chose to fund this study was that they had another agenda well beyond the health effects."

As it happens, Pew was a major donor to the Environmental Working Group for many years. And Pew recently changed its tax and legal status from that of a "private foundation" to a "public charity." This enables the multibillion-dollar behemoth to behave more like the activist groups it's been funding all these years.

While EWG and CEH want to force misleading warning labels on farmed salmon, the California state legislature is mulling a law that would completely ban the sale of farmed salmon in California. Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Sacramento) introduced this legislation just prior to the announcement of EWG and CEH's lawsuit.

Levine may want to turn his ear toward Canada, where they know their salmon. That nation's chief health authorities report: " [C]onsuming farmed salmon does not pose a health risk to consumers." Likewise, the British Food Standards Agency (the UK's equivalent to our FDA) notes that the results of the Pew-funded study show the levels of PCBs and dioxins in salmon are "within up to date safety levels set by the World Health Organization and the European Commission." As if these levels weren't safe enough, EWG and Pew failed to point out that the majority of the PCB's and dioxin are found in the fish's skin and fatty outer layer, which most people don't eat.

This concerted effort by anti-aquaculture activists to wrestle heart-healthy nutrients from California dinner plates is a bizarre but natural outgrowth of Proposition 65. When environmental Chicken Littles go on fishing expeditions where no harm exists, misinformation mayhem usually results. Salmon-loving consumers should hang on to their catch, and toss the scaremongers back to sea.

CalProp65.com

[calcowgirl]

FYI... The article at ConsumerFreedom.com has multiple links to the agencies and groups mentioned.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Salmon-loving consumers should hang on to their catch, and toss the scaremongers back to sea.

I plan to continue to eat Salmon!

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[tubebender]

We suffer the fate of living on Humboldt Bay and being forced to consume large large amounts of Wild Ocean caught salmon. We can tell the difference between wild and farmed and ever worse is salmon caught in our local rivers....

[SierraWasp]

What? Them fishery salmon no good? What's wrong with river salmon? They just arrived from the ocean, right?

[jimtorr]

I feel for you.

My father used to have a similar problem. His neighbor would go salmon fishing off the Central Oregon coast several times a year. He would catch so many that, after he smoked them, he would force my father to take one.

Sometimes I would be unlucky enough to visit while my parents still had some of that smoked salmon left.

[SierraWasp]

"And Pew recently changed its tax and legal status from that of a "private foundation" to a "public charity."

Hay! Awl Right!!!

What we needs here is anuther "PEW POLL/STUDY!"

To me... This is crying "FIRE" in a crowded room and should NOT be "protected freedom of speech!!!"

[jimtorr]

I never seem to know the difference between sarcasm and irony, but tubebender was sure using one of them.

Many years ago when the world was young, I went fishing with my family all summer long. We would go to the lakes in the Oregon Cascades, mostly, and go after trout and Kokanee(land-locked salmon).

The difference between hatchery trout and wild trout (fish that had been free for at least 1 year) was very obvious. Wild trout and salmon has a darker color and a much better flavor than that pale, bland hatchery or farmed fish.

I can't eat the farmed salmon & trout in most restaurants. There just isn't a reasonable amount of flavor.

[tubebender]

In late summer and fall the Klamath River is so loaded with algae from the warm water that after a couple of days the fish develop a off taste that is obvious to someone accustomed to wild ocean salmon. We owned a fishing lodge (private) on the Klamath above Weitchpec and all the steelhead we caught and kept we had to smoke...

[SierraWasp]

Tank yew! I'ma lernin!!! Butchew gotta start labelin whut yer sayin with some kinda "irony," or "sourchasm" label er we'll git cornfused an misunderstan ya, tubular one!!!

Rite, Jimtorr?

[BOBTHENAILER]

This enables the multibillion-dollar behemoth to behave more like the activist groups it's been funding all these years.

Now we be talkin'.

Just goes ta show ya what happens when the chilren get a multi-billion $ trust fund. They usually can't wait ta show their hate for all that bestowed wealth, by throwing it all away on super-lib causes, from the balcony of their PENTHOUSE.

Or maybe from their 10,000 acre estate in Hawaii, or from the chateau in France, or from the 50,000 acre rancher's in Montana, or maybe from the villa on Majorca, but quite possibly from the ocean front cabana in the Caribbean.

[SierraWasp]

"Now we be talkin'."

Yeah! An that ain't no E-Bonics Jive you be tawlkin!!! Yew NAILED IT!!! (The Nailerman strikes with the HAMMER!)

[BOBTHENAILER]

(The Nailerman strikes with the HAMMER!)

Jest doin' mah part, nailin' the idle bitch, er, ah means rich.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[Blood of Tyrants]

Then you'll have to catch it yourself because the lawyers will sue the commercial fishermen and processors and grocery stores so much that no one will carry it.