Posted on 07/15/2002 9:03:24 AM PDT by H8DEMS
(CNSNews.com) - In California, any product containing a chemical known to cause cancer in laboratory animals cannot be sold without a warning label, according to Proposition 65, a state consumer-protection law established in 1986.
But one watchdog group plans to sue a large retailer of natural and organic foods to prove just how ridiculous the law is.
Jeff Stier, an attorney for the American Council on Science and Health, plans to sue the Whole Foods Market because it does not affix warning labels, as mandated by Proposition 65, on any of its whole-grain wheat breads. The company's Whole Wheat Farm Bread, billed by Whole Foods Market as "the staff of life," is actually "full of carcinogens," Stier said.
The carcinogen that Stier specifically refers to in the lawsuit is "acrylamide," a naturally occurring chemical found to cause cancer in laboratory rats.
Acrylamide made headlines recently when researchers announced that fried, high-carbohydrate foods such as French fries and potato chips may contain acrylamide.
"People like picking on French fries because we know they aren't so healthy if you eat too many of them," Stier said. "But any carbohydrate that's baked or fried contains acrylamide."
That includes whole-grain wheat bread, he said.
Stier doubts whole-grain wheat bread is going to cause cancer, just as French fries aren't going to cause cancer. "It's the dose that makes the poison," he said. He called that the number one rule of toxicology.
Stier's group, the American Council on Science and Health, is a nonprofit consumer education organization that delights in debunking "junk science." In this case, said Stier, ACSH does not buy the argument advanced by Whole Foods Market that "trace levels of chemicals in the environment are dangerous and that's why you need to pay 100 percent more to buy organic produce."
The ACSH intends to invoke a provision within Prop. 65 that encourages any private citizen acting in the public interest to bring lawsuits against manufacturers of products that contain hazardous chemicals and do not have warning labels affixed to them.
Stier said he prefers the term "bounty hunter" as opposed to "private citizen."
"Bounty hunters" can earn up to $3,000 a day for each day a manufacturer is in violation of Prop. 65's labeling requirement, Stier said. Some environmental activist groups in California exist solely to bring Prop. 65 lawsuits against manufacturers, he added.
"They're kind of self-perpetuating," Stier said of the activists. "They go around suing people who make different chemicals and different products that have chemicals in them."
But Stier believes his lawsuit against Whole Foods Market will turn the table on activists who share the grocer's green ideologies.
"Even the most purest of pure foods sold by the purest of Whole Foods' stores contains carcinogens," Stier said.
Stier's group is particularly offended by Whole Foods' concept that trace levels of chemicals in the environment or in foods cause cancer in humans simply because they cause cancer in laboratory animals.
Stier hopes his lawsuit will force lawmakers and activists to acknowledge that Prop. 65 does not properly take into account that it's the amount of exposure to a given chemical that matters.
"It's an ill-advised law because it doesn't take into account, number one, that an animal carcinogen is not necessarily a human carcinogen," Stier said.
And, he said, Prop. 65 is a "really big problem" for businesses in California because they have to put warning labels on everything. "They don't know what they have to put warning labels on," he said.
According to Whole Foods Market spokesperson Kate Lowery, the company actually agrees with Stier.
"We agree with the absurdity of what they're trying to propose in their news release," Lowery said. "We obviously don't agree with them using our name."
She complained that the ACSH's use of Whole Foods Market's name "has nothing to do with the actual issue at hand."
"It was their way to get publicity out of this thing," Lowery said of Stier and the ACSH.
Or as it would be called with proper adherance to Prop. 65... Liquid Cancer
I know that Whole Foods sells black pepper (and cooked food items seasoned with black pepper) and seem to recall them encouraging throwing some meat items "on the grill".
Label all of it otherwise the law is pointless. Labelling everything may also make it pointless but there you go...
I thought that this article was going to tackle the definition of "organic" foods (and coffees) since some firms may be using the term in a "misleading" fashion.
FMCDH
It was only announced in the last 2-3 weeks that there is a THEORY that the cooking of grains/starches at higher temps such as baking/frying creates this chemical. Of course the WHO had an emergency meeting over it and much peer review is beginning.
Now, in addition to certifying that a grain is organically grown, there will have to be cerification that the same grain is organically processed/cooked.
Yes, but Soylent Green is people!
Life is a terminal disease (contrary to what Ted William's son believes).
The Soylent Corporation does many good things. Soylent Green is people feeding people...
Didn't they just recently switch to a synthetic people substitute?
Soylent green was supposed to be made out of plankton, but as Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) discovered from hard-to-find reports, the plankton had more-or-less died out due to ocean polution.
The movie was pretty good enviro-sci-fi, but then again, most environmentalism is sci-fi.
Whole Foods Sucks! Just another "Green" scam to get $$$ from enviro-weenies.
I used to go for fresh meats and produce when I could walk around the corner to one but they moved a couple blocks up the road and I dropped off from going. Plus I still needed to get toilet paper, paper towels, dishwashing soap, etc. and can get cheaper produce at Fiesta markets.
Got news for ya, TP and PT=dioxin=cancer.
Just let it hang and drop or use leaves, that's the natural way.
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