Coffee Requires Cancer Warning, California Judge Rules (cnbc.com)

Scientists haven't rendered a verdict on whether coffee is good or bad for you but a California judge has. He says coffee sellers in the state should have to post cancer warnings. From a report: The culprit is a chemical produced in the bean roasting process that is a known carcinogen and has been at the heart of an eight-year legal struggle between a tiny nonprofit group and Big Coffee. The Council for Education and Research on Toxics wanted the coffee industry to remove acrylamide from its processing -- like potato chip makers did when it sued them years ago -- or disclose the danger in ominous warning signs or labels. The industry, led by Starbucks, said the level of the chemical in coffee isn't harmful and any risks are outweighed by benefits. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said Wednesday that the coffee makers hadn't presented the proper grounds at trial to prevail.

Comments

Pointless labels

[Anonymous Coward]

When everything has to have a warning label the labels start being ignored. Maybe it's time to just start saying everything in California causes cancer and call it a day?

numb to actual danagers

[mehtars]

Putting too many warning labels has the habit of making people numb to actual dangers and warning labels.

Idiotic

[Geoffrey.landis]

Indeed, this is idiotic.

There is ample evidence showing that coffee is surprisingly good for you. Saying it has to be labelled a "carcinogen" is doing nothing to help anybody's health, but is contributing to people ignoring warning labels, which is not a good thing. California's laws are stupid and counterproductive.

  http://time.com/4116129/coffee-longer-life/

http://www.webmd.com/alzheimer...

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/this-is-your-brain-on-coffee/

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/16/456191657/drink-to-your-health-study-links-daily-coffee-habit-to-longevity

Re:Idiotic

[syn3rg]

I'm beginning to think California judges may need a stupidity warning label.

Re:Idiotic

[syn3rg]

If only that lawyer had to pay court costs and fines if they lost.

Re:Idiotic

[cayenne8]

"Land of fruits and nuts" indeed.

Indeed!!

And yet...we STILL allow CA to dictate so much about what happens and what is allowed across the US.

They have waaaaay too much power over what the rest of us have to deal with in our lives...from gas mileage, to restrictions on what you can/can't buy or manufacture, etc.

Hell we give Californial Special Waivers all the time it seems from Federal laws.

If you wanna live in the land of flakes and nuts, ok, but we shouldn't allow it all to spread across the nation of states that have very different populations, geographic needs and environments.

If everything is $property, nothing is

[Opportunist]

If everything is critical, nothing is. If everything is important, nothing is. If everything is a carcinogen, nothing is.

Unless you put a qualifier next to it, it's meaningless because it voids any importance the label could originally have had. There is a difference in how likely it's gonna kill you, and this has to be stressed. Yes, working as a liquidator for Chernobyl, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee are all likely going to cause cancer in you. But one is quite certainly going to kill you quite soon, one is likely to kill you somewhere in the future and one is ... well, we don't know but might kill you ... at some point in time.

And unless we establish some kind of way to differentiate between them, such labels will lose all meaning they might have had. If I can't avoid doing or eating something that is labeled as "causes cancer", why bother trying to avoid any of them?