Prop 37 on this fall’s California ballot, pleasantly billed as the Right to Know campaign, would require labeling of food with genetically modified (GMO/GE) ingredients. Backers say Europe already has similar rules and there’s no reason California shouldn’t follow suit. And even though health fears about GMO/GE products have been debunked by virtually every scientific authority to look into the matter — from the AMA to the World Health Organization, and including science reporting in such perhaps unexpected venues as Mother Jones and the Huffington Post — voters in a new Pepperdine poll still approve of the idea by a lopsided 69 to 22 percent. After all, how much could it cost just to put labels on foods?
We may soon find out. California’s fabled Proposition 65, enacted in 1986, requires the labeling of products that expose consumers to substances linked to cancer. That’s a pleasant-sounding idea too, but 26 years later the law has benefited almost no one but litigators. Even as cancer remains just as much of a problem in California as elsewhere, a cadre of lawyers in the state have made many, many tens of millions of dollars filing inadequate-labeling suits against purveyors of such products as candles, fireplace logs, Christmas lights, hammers, billiard cue chalk, matches, grilled chicken, life-saving drugs, brass doorknobs, car exhaust in parking garages, and on and on. (Most of the money in the resulting settlements goes to the lawyers, which is one reason defendants often describe Prop 65 litigation as legalized extortion.)
The official proponent of the new Prop 37 — such a coincidence! — is an Oakland attorney who’s taken in millions in Prop 65 settlements. Maybe that’s one reason Prop 37 goes out of its way to impose liability risks on food handlers that go far beyond anything seen in Europe.
No comments:
Post a Comment