California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown announced last week that he'd settled lawsuits against leading makers of potato chips and French fries over levels of a cancer-causing chemical in their products.
At first blush, this looked like a laudable example of the public and private sectors working together to safeguard consumers. In reality, it was a textbook illustration of how companies all too often have to be dragged screaming and kicking to do the right thing.
"That's a fair description of what happened here," said Ed Weil, the supervising deputy attorney general who oversaw the case.
"We had to fight tooth and nail with these people. It was very frustrating."
The lawsuit centered on a chemical called acrylamide, which has been listed as a cancer-causing substance in California since 1990. Acrylamide is used industrially for sewage treatment.
According to the state's Office of Environmental Hazard Assessment, "a number of scientific studies indicate that acrylamide can cause cancer in laboratory animals, and available information suggests that acrylamide is likely to cause cancer in humans."
The Environmental Protection Agency has determined that long-term exposure to acrylamide can damage people's nervous systems and lead to paralysis and cancer.
But it wasn't until 2002 that Swedish scientists discovered that acrylamide is naturally produced when potatoes and other starchy foods are cooked at high temperatures, making popular snacks like potato chips and French fries potentially carcinogenic.
It remains unclear what danger the levels of acrylamide in food pose to people. The Food and Drug Administration is still researching the matter.
But it seems reasonable to think that when the Swedish findings were announced, food companies would have immediately taken steps to alert customers to the possible health hazard.
They didn't do that. They stayed mum.
In 2005, then-Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer filed suit against a number of food companies and fast-food restaurant chains demanding that they disclose acrylamide dangers as per the requirements of California's Proposition 65.
Enacted in 1986, Proposition 65 requires the state to publish an annual list of chemicals known to cause cancer and requires businesses to warn people about the presence of any substance on the list.
As Weil recalled it, California's lawsuit began "a slow, punishing, inch-by-inch process" during which the companies circled their wagons and tried repeatedly to have the case dismissed.
