New legal target: chocolate

Orange County Register ^ | 10/8/02 | Jeffrey B. Margulies

[rhema]

Countless consumer products have come within the sights of California's Proposition 65's inexplicable obsession with remote, and sometimes nonexistent, risks. The last two years have seen bounty hunter lawsuits claiming that Californians are exposed to toxins from products such as picture frames, lightbulbs, Christmas lights, electrical tape, braces, game darts, stained-glass lamps, fire logs, exercise weights, hammers, terrariums, tools, cue chalk, cosmetics, even Slim-Fast.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The manufacturers argue that the trace levels of metals in chocolates are well below industry and government standards, are found in many foods and are not unsafe.

This is a result of the fact that sensitivities of analytical instrumentation have increased to the point where trace contaminants can now be routinely determined at the PPT (pats per trillion) level. There are always trace amounts of just about everything in any "pure" material, they just could not be detected with the instrumentation available in the past.

A little analytical chemistry knowledge in the hands of a trial lawyer is a dangerous thing.

[Norman Conquest]

Hershey sold me chocolate knowing that it would cause adolescent zits, unpopularity, a lifetime as a creepy loner, antisocial then sociopathic behavior.

I gots to get paid!

[tacticalogic]

Anyone else see the recent episode of CSI, where the gambler was supposedly sufferning from lead poisoning from eating too much chocolate? Sometimes I wonder if the writers for these shows work with the lawyers to bias the jury pool in advance of big money lawsuits.

[baseballfanjm]

I bet they watched last week's CSI. Only CSI had a guy dying from obsessively eating several pounds of chocolate a day for about twenty years, not by eating a bar every so often. Anyway, I'm obsessed with chocolate. It's probably the one food I can't get enough of. Except for shrimp, I don't know why.

[tacticalogic]

The broader question, however, remains: Is this what we voted for when we passed "The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986"?

For that matter, is this what the founding fathers intended when they wrote "to regulate commerce among the several states"?

[grobdriver]

The broader question, however, remains: Is this what we voted for when we passed "The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986"?

Of course not, you moron. But down through the centuries there has been this saying having to do with a camel's nose under the tent... ever hear of it?
You people in California deserve every bit of stupidity you get. It's just a shame you bring down the rest of the country with you.
I got out of there as fast as my little legs and a Uhaul truck would allow after separating from the Navy. Anybody with a lick of sense would, too.

[reformed_democrat]

I'm obsessed with chocolate. It's probably the one food I can't get enough of. Except for shrimp, I don't know why.

I do.
It's because you're an incredibly intelligent human being with exquisite taste.

Pass the cocktail sauce, please.

[aruanan]

The manufacturers argue that the trace levels of metals in chocolates are well below industry and government standards, are found in many foods and are not unsafe. However, a Prop. 65 enforcer only needs to show a "detectable" exposure, not that the product is unsafe. The company must put on a highly technical defense to prove that the chemical is naturally occurring or that the level of exposure is insignificant.

Find The Apocalytics by Edith Efron. She warned about this back in the mid 1980's. People had LONG known that food is composed of chemicals, that virtually any of these chemicals in sufficient quantities could be dangerous, that some of them could be carcinogenic. But a small group of radical leftist scientists focussed their attention on industrial chemicals as carcinogens for the purpose of undermining an industrial-based market economy (all of them have proposed a socialist government as a solution to "the coming cancer epidemic"). As a result of their work, aided and abetted by the major news media, such major government measures as the Toxic Substances Control Act, EPA, OSHA either were created or had their focus radically shifted to support the political agenda of these scientists. The question was asked almost 20 years ago, "What's going to happen when people find out that food contains naturally-occurring carcinogens and other poisons after being told the lie that the only way they can be safe from cancer is for the government to exercise strict control over any industry that produces any substance with any trace of any chemical that could possibly have some carcinogenic or mutagenic effect?" We're beginning to see the answer to that question in which stupidity is compounded by hysteria.

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[VOA]

A little analytical chemistry knowledge in the hands of a trial lawyer is a dangerous thing.

Amen...from a fellow who has worked in the bio-analytical chemistry area.

[B Knotts]

I voted against this idiotic proposition, knowing that it would lead to just this kind of abuse.

[kaktuskid]

Of course shrimp has natural occuring arsenic.

[savedbygrace]

The chocolate manufacturers should hold a well-advertised news conference. There, they should announce that they are settling this case by paying the plantiffs a healthy amount of money. But the kicker is this: Rather than agreeing to make any manufacturing changes, they will all voluntarily cease all sales and shipments to any California locations. Effective as soon as the plaintiffs agree to the settlement.

[RightWhale]

Chemistry has changed since I last took a course. Now they are using fluorescence spectrometers that can detect 100 atoms of something in the sample. There weren't such devices before. This field isn't just a hobby involving a volumetric flask and a bunsen burner anymore; lab equipment is too expensive when the economy model [refurbished] of a device is over $5000.

[talleyman]

Chocolate-covered shrimp? Hmmm...

[Thisiswhoweare]

Yes. You beat me to it! Could be the other way around also.
After all, lawyers have people do everything for them and all they have to do is show up these days. Sometimes they don't even do that, they send a stand in. They are getting more like movie stars all the time.

[Rebelbase]

"Chocolate-covered shrimp? Hmmm... "

With butter, of course!

[Desdemona]

I bet they watched last week's CSI.

My thought exactly.

BTW, they can take away my chocolate, or put up with PMS. Their choice.

[17th Miss Regt]

Effective as soon as the plaintiffs agree to the settlement.

Minor correction. "Effective as soon as the late plaintiff's estates agree to the settlement".