SACRAMENTO – On July 5, the Office Environmental Health Hazard Assessment proposed modified amendments to Proposition 65 that could increase the amount of warnings on food products, and business leaders are uneasy on how it would affect business in the state.
“We are concerned that California’s new Prop 65 regulations will lead to more unwarranted lawsuits and create another substantial challenge to growing in the state,” said Gino DiCaro, media spokesperson for the California Manufacturing and Technology Association.
Proposition 65 was first implemented as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act in 1986 with the intention of protecting the state’s drinking water sources from being contaminated with chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
The law requires businesses to inform Californians about exposures to such chemicals and requires the state to maintain and update a list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity. However, over the course of the last three decades the law has turned into a logistics nightmare for California as that list continues to grow.
“The heavy burden businesses already face when defending against Prop 65 bounty hunters will be substantially more difficult under a facility-by-facility approach," CalChamber said regarding the proposed amendments in an article via Capitol Insider. "The CalChamber coalition is preparing comments pushing back against the modified proposal.”