California in conflict with FDA over warnings on canned tuna

Aug 23 2005

The state of California has had it's knuckles rapped by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over warnings on canned tuna.

The FDA says the state's attempt to require mercury warnings on tuna conflicts with federal law.

But California's attorney general has disputed this and says the FDA move is an attempt to stop a lawsuit the state has filed against tuna companies over the warnings.

According to Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the federal government has no authority to prevent California, or any other state, from requiring warnings that provide truthful, important information to consumers.

It was a year ago that Lockyer sued the nation's three largest canned tuna companies in an attempt to enforce Proposition 65, a 1968 California law which requires businesses to provide "clear and reasonable" warnings when they expose consumers to known reproductive toxins, such as mercury.

The three companies sued were Tri-Union Seafoods, maker of Chicken of the Sea; Del Monte, maker of Starkist; and Bumble Bee Seafoods, maker of Bumble Bee.

In a letter written by Commissioner Lester Crawford on Aug. 12, the FDA argues that the warnings Lockyer is seeking to have enforced are pre-empted under federal law.

Crawford says in his letter that such warnings "frustrate the carefully considered federal approach to advising consumers of both the benefits and possible risks of eating fish and shellfish".

According to the FDA the best way to warn consumers about health risks is with advisories, which target specific audiences, delivered by doctors or certain media outlets.

General warning labels they say can overexpose consumers, and possibly scare the wrong audience away from food they should be eating.

But Dresslar argues that many people never see FDA advisories, and providing a posted warning in a supermarket, or a label on a can, would inform many more people about potential reproductive problems from mercury.

He also contends that the timing of the letter appears designed to "squash" California's lawsuit.

A San Francisco Superior Court trial date is set for Oct. 19, and Dresslar says the defendants have informed California they plan to ask the judge to find that Proposition 65 is pre-empted by federal law.

Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer at the FDA's Center for Food, Safety and Applied Nutrition, said he was not aware of any connection between the letter and the trial timing, while a spokesman for the tuna industry praised Crawford's letter and criticized Lockyer.

David Burney, executive director of the U.S. Tuna Foundation, says Lockyer has dismissed the FDA's concerns without addressing any of the major issues presented.

He says tuna should be treated as an important source of nutrition and food source, especially for the low-income community, and not a political football.