We slap labels and warnings and disclaimers on everything these days—and the more we do it, the less we seem to pay attention.
When was the last time you read the long legal notice that asked for your consent before you upgraded your phone’s operating system? Have you ever made a joke about getting arrested by the
mattress police because you removed a tag, supposedly “under penalty of law”? (Spoiler alert: It’s
okay for buyers to remove mattress tags.) And don’t get me started on the reckless overuse of “non-GMO” labels, especially when they involve
salt—a mineral that can’t be GMO or non-GMO because it doesn’t even have genes.
Each of these examples owes its existence to anxious lawyers, meddlesome regulators, or misleading marketers.
What they rarely consider are the basic needs of ordinary consumers for accurate and useful information.
That’s why I’m so encouraged by a new federal court ruling that blocks my home state of California from mandating a bad and inappropriate label on a popular agricultural product.
Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said it was
unconstitutional for California’s government to require the placement of cancer warning labels on glyphosate, a crop-protection tool that helps farmers and gardeners fight weeds.
Glyphosate is one of the oldest, most popular, and most effective herbicides in the world. Regulatory agencies everywhere have deemed it safe. That includes the
Environmental Protection Agency here in the United States, as well as the
European Food Safety Authority and the
European Chemicals Agency, plus the
Food Safety Commission of Japan and agencies in
Canada and in
Australia and New Zealand.
This is the very definition of a scientific consensus: A result found to be true and confirmed repeatedly by international teams of researchers.
So why would a single state like California seek to require a warning label that is essentially a false alarm? The answer is simple: Labels have become political. Many of them are no longer about what people need to know, but rather what special-interest groups seek to impose—in this case, environmental activists who want to raise costs and uncertainties among farmers and consumers.
The federal judges slapped down California’s regulation because public officials chose to play politics instead of following sound science.
We need good labels, of course—and especially when it comes to our food. The “
Nutrition Facts” label required by the Food and Drug Administration makes sense. It provides data on calories, ingredients, and serving sizes in a form that people can understand as they decide what to buy and eat.
We need proper warning labels, too. The FDA requires labels on safe products that may be found in kitchens everywhere, such as
Clorox Bleach. Keep it out of the reach of children!
Crop-protection products such as glyphosate need
labels that offer usage instructions. They provide helpful information on wearing gear such as long-sleeved shirts during application, washing hand thoroughly afterward, and how to dispose of empty containers.
On my
almond farm in California, we use safe crop-protection products to protect our trees and nuts from pests and disease. We study and take required tests to receive certificates and licenses that indicate we are prepared to use these important tools safely. We also enroll in continuing-education classes to make sure we’re up to date on best practices.
All of this preparation is important to us as we work together to grow the healthy and nutritious food that our customers expect, always putting safety first. We also do it because it’s good for almond trees, keeping them healthy during the productive lives, which can last as long as 30 years. Most of all, we do it for our family: My children live and play in our fields, and we’d never put them in harm’s way.
When public officials play politics with labels, however, they put everything at risk because they encourage people not to take their words and warnings with the seriousness that appropriate labels deserve.
The federals judges saw the threat—and they wisely struck a blow against the proliferation of pointless labels.
Their wisdom recalls a famous
line from the movie “The Incredibles.” Confronted with the platitude that “everyone is special,” a kid replies: “Which is another way of saying no one is.”
In other words, when everything carries a label, then nothing does—and the surest way to get consumers to stop paying attention to labels is to overwhelm them with labels full of confusing, useless, and deceptive information.
