STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 25 high quality Co f f e e that TasTes like fresh brewed the integrated extraCtion system i n sta nt High Yield High Quality www.flavourtech.com individuals exposed to the chemical over seventy years. If that argument is rejected, defendants may argue that but a higher "alternative significant risk level" (ASRL) is justified if "sound considerations of public health support an alternative level." The California coffee trial began in 2010, when the non-profit Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT) filed in court against coffee companies for not providing cancer warn- ings on their products. CERT, which is really the Metzger Law Group, Ralph Metzger as lead at- torney, started on litigation right away after the Swedish study became known. CERT has won a number of cases and large judgments, for example against numerous producers of potato chips. The first phase of the coffee trial, decided in 2015, was largely about acrylamide itself. De- spite testimony from well-known scientists and Starbucks' objection that coffee contains many chemicals, Berle ruled that the defendants failed to document the harmless effects of acrylamide in isolation. He dismissed testimony that coffee low- ered the risk of cancer as irrelevant. The judge's ruling against coffee last March, reaffirmed in May, was Phase II of the case. Phase III will be assignment of penalties. Only after that happens can any appeal proceed. Such appeals are almost never successful. The darker the bread, the sooner you're dead—there is much more acrylamide on dark toast than on lighter versions Berle's decision disregards the World Health Organization's (WHO) announcement in June 2016 that it "found no conclusive evidence for a carcino- genic effect of drinking coffee." WHO drew upon work at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which earlier had been quick to list sub- stances as carcinogenic, for example glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp. That makes WHO's announcement even more important. In Phase II of the coffee trial, defendants tried to show that acrylamide in coffee had a low risk of causing cancer, that a lower ASRL was justi- fied. Starbucks and other companies brought out big guns for the defense, including David Kessler, former head of the Food and Drug Administra- tion. He argued that the risk pool should be no greater than 10,000, making the chance that an "excess" cancer would occur much less than in a Toast and photo by Robert Thurston

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