At the Asian grocery, I bought a sesame candy made in Taiwan. The ingredients are white sesame, sugar, maltose, salt. The package sports the California “Cancer and Reproductive Harm” sticker with the look-up website https://www.p65warnings.ca.gov/chemicals. None of those 4 ingredients is on the list. What is the sticker warning me of?
It exists, therefore the state of California thinks it’s a deadly danger, so far as I can tell. I live in California, and see that warning on damn near everything. It’s lost all useful meaning, IMO.
Maybe it was made in a factory that uses one of the no-no chemicals.
When Proposition 65 was on the ballot, I knew what would happen if it passed. “The Law that cried ‘WOLF!’”, I’ve always called it.
Many companies, these days, post Proposition 65 warnings, even if they have no reason to believe there is any relevant chemical threat, just to avoid the danger of being sued if such a threat turns out to exist.
Californians are so accustomed to seeing these warnings everywhere, that if a genuine chemical-based threat were ever to exist, it would be impossible to believably warn us of it.
There is a place to ask about a particular product, I believe, and you can send a question directly to them, also.
Yeah, that’s an odd one. Potential trace heavy metal absorption by the seeds and potential acrylamide production by heating sesame with boiling sugars seems to be the answer. Potential being the key word.
Apparently it is just the company covering their own ass on the cheap. CA doesn’t mandate they slap that label on, the company does so itself in lieu of doing the batch testing to prove that there isn’t any contamination. Or in other words there is almost certainly nothing there, but the company doesn’t want to jump through the regulatory/laboratory hoops of regularly proving it for some cheap imported bulk candy with a slim profit margin. So they slap the label on and hey, CA law is satisfied and it’s just caveat emptor for you. If you get lead poisoning from eating thirty pounds of sesame candy, don’t go crying to the company - they warned you, all nice and legal-like.
While I agree that’s probably what’s going on here. I wonder if it’s possible the warning isn’t about the food but something in the packaging. For example, maybe there’s lead in the ink.
That’s the problem with just about every regulation that attempts to define “too much.” Our brains just can’t deal with the fact that everything is a spectrum, not a crisp yes/no, on/off.
I grew up in CA, had family there, and lived nearby in Las Vegas when Prop 65 passed in 1986. The real problem was that the “OMG, Everything is at least a little bit carcinogenic” movement was in full swing.
As a result, the thresholds for “contains dangerous chemical X” were set far too low. Leaving the situation that you can’t tell a toxic waste dump from a cellophane-wrapped candy. Since they both (probably) have more than 1 picogram of legitimately dangerous chemical X in them.
As said by others above, the other problem was it quickly became cheaper to label everything as dangerous rather than perform the testing to prove whether something is or isn’t dangerous under the law.
Good intentions * bad implementation → unintended consequences where the negative overwhelms the positive.
It’s the edible version of the cookie banner.
It’s most likely due to the sesame seeds. They pick up trace heavy metals, especially lead and cadmium, from the soil they’re grown in. CA prop 65 limits can be 1000X lower than FDA for some heavy metals. Consider it an “FYI.” Doesn’t mean you’re going to croak the next day eating a package of the candy, but if you’re living off them, you might want to consider your daily intake.
No, most likely it’s due to absolutely nothing. Prop 65 puts in place very heavy penalties if you have one of those substances without the warning, but no penalties at all for having the warning without the substances. And consumers have learned to completely ignore the warning. So the path of least resistance is for everyone to just slap the warning on everything, without ever thinking about it.
When I visited California, I didn’t know about any of this backstory, but the stickers had precisely zero impact on my buying and eating habits.
Yeah, the Wiki on Prop 65 backs you up 100%.
If you visit California, virtually every building you enter will have one of those Prop 65 warnings, rendering the warnings completely useless. It’s a stupid proposition.