Cancer alert for coffee might be brewing based on California case
A future cup of coffee in California could give you jitters before you even take a sip.
A nonprofit group wants coffee manufacturers, distributors and retailers to post ominous warnings about a cancer-causing chemical stewing in every brew and has been presenting evidence in a Los Angeles courtroom to make its case.
The long-running lawsuit that resumed Monday claims Starbucks and about 90 other companies, including grocery stores and retail shops, failed to follow a state law requiring warning signs about hazardous chemicals found everywhere from household products to workplaces to the environment.
At the center of the dispute is acrylamide, a carcinogen found in cooked foods such as french fries that is also a natural byproduct of the coffee-roasting process. The coffee industry has acknowledged the presence of the chemical but asserts it is at harmless levels and is outweighed by benefits from drinking coffee.
Although the case has been percolating in the courts since 2010, it has gotten little attention.
A verdict in favor of the little-known Council for Education and Research on Toxics could send a jolt through the industry, with astronomical penalties possible. It also could wake up a lot of consumers, though it’s unclear what effect it would have on coffee-drinking habits.
The lawyer taking on Big Coffee said the larger goal is to motivate the industry to remove the chemical from coffee, which would also benefit his own three-cupa-day fix.
“I’m addicted — like twothirds of the population,” attorney Raphael Metzger said. “I would like the industry to get acrylamide out of the coffee so my addiction doesn’t force me to ingest it.” .
Metzger represented the council in a case that resulted in potato-chip makers agreeing in 2008 to pay $3 million and remove acrylamide from their product.
The law has been credited with reducing chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects, such as lead in hair dyes, mercury in nasal sprays and arsenic in bottled water.
But warnings, which can be startling on first encounter, have been less effective due to sometimes inconspicuous placement or vague language.
But District Judge Tim Sulak sided with the state in a recent ruling — and he ordered Bailey and Peterson to pay a total of nearly $426,000 for the state’s attorney’s fees.
Jennifer Riggs, an Austin attorney representing Bailey and Peterson, took issue with a number of aspects of Sulak’s ruling Monday, saying they’re considering an appeal.
“We are very disappointed that the trial court declined to recognize very basic property rights,” Riggs said.
Patrick Tarlton, executive director of the Texas Deer Association, didn’t respond Monday to requests for comment. Tarlton’s group wasn’t a party to the lawsuit, although he previously expressed support for it and called the state’s response to the disease “unreasonable and heavy-handed.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton heralded the judge’s decision, however, saying the wildlife agency’s regulations Scout and a former director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs.
Employers see it as a timely perk that appeals to everyone, especially millennials. Also, it’s low-cost. Last year, the Internal Revenue Service said it could be considered a non-taxable benefit for employees; before, it was taxable unless the employer had a breach.
Many companies offer the service free to employees; others offer it at a discounted price or share the cost. At some employers, if an employee wants to make it a family plan, he or she can pay extra.
Employers have a strong interest in their workers using the service. Recovering from ID theft can be a huge drain on time. A 2016 report from the Identity Theft Resource “serve to protect Texas’ 700,000 licensed deer hunters, along with the thousands of people in rural communities across the state whose livelihoods depend on deer hunting.”
Paxton said the rules “reduce the probability of (chronic wasting disease) being spread from deer-breeding facilities, where it may exist, and increase the chances of detecting and containing (the disease) if it does exist.”
Chronic wasting disease, a neurological condition, was first documented in Texas in 2012 in a free-ranging mule deer in far West Texas, according to the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife. The disease causes weight loss, behavioral changes, brain lesions, excessive salivation, pneumonia, difficulty swallowing and head tremors.
Since then, a total of 50 cases of the disease have been documented in Texas — 32 of which involved whitetailed deer either in or originating from captive deer breeding facilities, according to the wildlife agency. Center, which helps victims of identity theft, found that nearly 56 percent of victims surveyed needed to take time off work to deal with the issue.
Then there’s the mental cost: A 2014 survey of identity victims by the Department of Justice found that 36 percent of people whose personal information was stolen “reported moderate or severe emotional distress as a result of the incident.”
How effective are identity theft protection services in preventing fraud? That’s difficult to judge because the data is “fairly green,” Hollis said.
A March 2017 report by the Government Accountability Office found that “when selecting a vendor to provide identity theft services, companies consider a variety of factors, but generally do not directly assess the effectiveness of each provider’s services, according to breached companies and experts with Sixteen of the cases involved free-ranging mule deer, one was a free-ranging elk and one involved a free-ranging whitetail deer.
Steve Lightfoot, a spokesman for the wildlife agency, said the disease so far appears to be under control in Texas.
“The fact that we are monitoring and sampling deer is to ensure that the health of the resource is maintained,” Lightfoot said Monday. “Texas is internationally know for its whitetail deal, (and) it’s a huge economic boon to the state. A lot of rural communities rely on deer hunting for their livelihood.” whom we spoke.”
The biggest benefit for employers and employees may be peace of mind — and thus higher productivity.
The federal government is no stranger to picking up after cyberattacks, either. After a 2015 breach, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management entered into contracts worth $240 million for identity theft services for federal employees, according to the GAO report.
The report noted that early last year, the Obama administration proposed for the fiscal year 2017 budget that identity theft services be added as an employee benefit.
Should another breach happen, the General Service Administration does have contracts with IdentityForce to provide identity monitoring and data breach response services for affected workers, and with Identity Theft Guard Solutions, which does business as ID Experts.