I had no idea this was even an issue, but apparently the lawsuit has been going on for three years and that is after a prior settlement with fast-food companies over the same violations. The Associated Press reports:

California sued H.J. Heinz Co., Frito-Lay, Kettle Foods Inc., and Lance Inc. in 2005, alleging they violated a state requirement that companies post warning labels on products with carcinogens.

The companies avoided trial by agreeing to pay a combined $3 million in fines and reduce the levels of acrylamide in their products over three years, officials said.

The FDA says the dangers of high doses of acrylamide in food were only just discovered in 2002. Here are the top five food types documented in 2006, with a mean AA intake greater than 0.027 kgbw-day:

1. French Fries
2. Potato Chips
3. Breakfast Cereal
4. Cookies
5. Brewed Coffee

Interesting that the lawsuit started when the data seems to have first become available. Must be more to the story. Also interesting that most employers in America provide chips and coffee to staff. Do they know they are killing them slowly with carcinogens?

I often go to a place now that keeps unlimited amounts of cheap processed breakfast cereal out in plastic tubs, and serves transfat products in baskets. I tried to explain the risk to facilities, but they said they had to buy whatever was cheapest. Sadly, I found it impossible to explain the irony of this insecure perspective. Until the harm is real and present, staring them down in the face and threatening their pocketbook, they play dumb.

The lack of warning or information from the FDA has been noticed elsewhere. A CSPI story from 2002 highlights a more global view of health and safety:

Today is the first day of a three-day closed meeting in Geneva of experts convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) to discuss the health ramifications of the acrylamide discovery, which has since been confirmed by the British, Swiss, and Norwegian governments. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) though, has been standing on the sidelines of what is fast becoming a major global debate, according to CSPI, which today called on the agency to treat acrylamide with greater seriousness.

“The FDA has been strangely silent about acrylamide,” CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson said. “It should be advising consumers to avoid or cut back on the most contaminated and least nutritious foods while more testing is done across the food supply. The FDA also should be intensively investigating ways of preventing the formation of this carcinogen.”

California is suing, not the federal agencies. The story from 2002 did not make the big news, as far as I can tell, despite the impact to American national security as explained in 2002:

The amount of acrylamide in a large order of fast-food French fries is at least 300 times more than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows in a glass of water. Acrylamide is sometimes used in water-treatment facilities.

“I estimate that acrylamide causes several thousand cancers per year in Americans,” said Clark University research professor Dale Hattis. Hattis, an expert in risk analysis, based his estimate on standard EPA projections of risks from animal studies and limited sampling of acrylamide levels in Swedish and American foods.

With the EPA backing down from protection of consumers and wildlife, to favor industrial self-regulation, one can only presume states and citizens are on their own here to battle with those who would do them harm. Cheers to California for taking a stand on an important issue, just like breach notification laws.