Starbucks won the Coffee Cancer case! California ruled that coffee products do not need to post cancer warnings

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According to news from Beijing time on the 4th, California officially ruled that coffee does not pose a serious cancer risk. The state's regulator approved a rule that coffee products sold in California do not have to bear cancer warning labels.

The incident dates back to 2010, when the toxic substances Education and Research Committee, a non-profit organization in the United States, filed a lawsuit in court, accusing 90 coffee practitioners, including Starbucks, of violating California Proposition 65. Consumers were not warned that coffee products contained chemicals that could cause cancer. The group said coffee retailers and others could not prove to the judge that they would not produce acrylamide when roasting coffee beans at high temperatures, posing a risk to consumers.

The question is, what is acrylamide? This is the product of Mena reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars in food during heating at more than 120 degrees Celsius. it has mutagenicity in vivo and in vitro tests. it can cause gene mutations and chromosome abnormalities in mammalian somatic and germ cells. Coffee, French fries, bread and potato chips and other foods made at a temperature of more than 120 degrees Celsius naturally produce acrylamide, and acrylamide is also found in cigarette smoke.

In 1994, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) rated acrylamide as "potentially carcinogenic to humans"-class 2 carcinogens (2A), that is, human carcinogens. In 2016, however, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer removed coffee from the list of "possible carcinogens".

Perhaps many people still remember the article "Starbucks Coffee causes Cancer" published on the social platform at the end of March last year. At that time, many domestic platforms quoted US media reports on the Los Angeles High Court's ruling that Starbucks and other coffee must be marked with a cancer warning in California, which was misinterpreted, making the public think that "coffee is carcinogenic." William Murray, president of the National Coffee Association, commented on the latest ruling at that time, "after repeated verification, coffee has long been proved to be a healthy drink." This lawsuit will not only mislead consumers, but also do nothing to improve public health. "

Last year, some coffee retailers settled the lawsuit and agreed to post warning signs in their coffee shops. But the protracted public interest lawsuit was not over, when the court said the third stage of the trial would revolve around how much compensation coffee practitioners should pay to "victims", with a reference figure of $2500 per person, given that California has a population of 40 million. This is an unrealistic astronomical figure.

Until June 4 this year, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment concluded that coffee did not have a serious cancer risk, noting that the World Health Organization had evaluated more than 1000 studies and did not find enough evidence to prove that coffee causes cancer. 90 coffee companies, including Starbucks, finally turned around, and California officially ruled that coffee did not pose a "serious" cancer risk, and then withdrew the warning sign.

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