Strike Up the Banned

California OKs bills to ban phthalates in kids' products, and lead bullets in condor country

Posted at 7:13 AM on 15 Oct 2007

In an orgy of legislative activity, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) signed and vetoed a bunch of environmental bills this weekend. Among the most significant bills that got the Governator's OK is one banning the chemicals phthalates in toys and other products intended for children 3 years old and younger. "These chemicals threaten the health and safety of our children at critical stages of their development," Schwarzenegger said. Phthalates have been linked to cancer and reproductive defects. Another bill signed this weekend bans the use of lead bullets within the range of the imperiled California condor -- a scavenger prone to lead poisoning. Some of the vetoed environmental bills include legislation that would have required chain restaurants to list nutrition information on common menu items, a bill that would have forced apartment complexes to offer recycling to their tenants, a measure that would have required bottled-water companies to reveal the source of their water, a pair of bills requiring new energy-efficiency standards for both residential and commercial buildings, and legislation that would have required labeling food made from cloned animals.

sources: Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press

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Comments: (4 comments)

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Wow.

So, he signed the two bills that have been all over the news the past week, and vetoed all the rest.

Yeah, you're a real green-leaner, Arnie.

by Pathos at 11:35 PM on 15 Oct 2007

Hurray for the condors!

That at least is good news, and not only for the condors: Californians should be happy to know that Arnold will not always do what the NRA tells him to do.

(And my understanding is that lead shot, not lead bullets, has been the problem, and that it is the lead shot that is now banned. But I could be wrong.)

Another bill that he signed:

<<
-- SB880, by Ronald Calderon, D-Montebello, which allows the import and sale of kangaroo leather favored by many soccer players. The state Supreme Court upheld a 1971 state ban in July.
>>

That does not sound very animal-friendly. But presumably the non-kangaroo alternatives are no better.

And:

<<
-- AB105, by Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, which requires parents of would-be tanning salon customers ages 14 to 17 to consent in person, and prohibiting younger kids from tanning at all.
>>

Is this a uniquely California-teenage-girl issue? Can the parents who sign the consent then be arrested for child abuse?

The water-source veto is rather a puzzle. One might have thought that that was an obvious slam-dunk.

As for selling meat from cloned animals, I do not know enough about it to say if there is a new, special ethical problem with it, aside from the usual grave ethical difficulties associated with unnaturally fattening a captive animal and slaughtering it at an early age. Do many consumers of meat have serious objections to eating meat from cloned animals? If so, why?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 4:53 AM on 16 Oct 2007

re: caniscandida

Truth be told, most meat-eaters don't know about the issue of cloned meat; it's just not that high-profile a thing.

As for what's wrong with it, no one actually knows. As far as any evidence suggests, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Personally, if it could be shown that it makes meat production less resource-intensive, or somehow more humane than conventional breeding, I'll be all for it. (Not saying it does; just saying, if, then.) But for the same reason genetically modified crops are held in such fear by environmentalists--and with slightly less basis, because GM crops do infect regular crops with their DNA, and simple breeding regulations could stop that from happening with cloned animals--some people really like to portray cloned meat as this decade's anti-Christ.

Several environmental groups seemed to be waging a campaign against it a couple of years ago when the technology first came to light; I was on two or three of their mailing lists, but I'm afraid I'm on enough lists and my attention span is short enough that I don't remember which particular groups they were. Anyway, their arguments really smacked of bandwagonism. They had no specific claims against it; they just seemed to be promoting a general assumption that it must somehow be bad.

That said, there's no evidence that it's not somehow less healthy than meat produced "the old-fashioned way"--but try proving a negative like that, and see how far it gets you.

by Pathos at 4:47 PM on 16 Oct 2007

Oh, yeah.

Now that I've gone on a tirade in defense of the not-even-fledgeling cloned animal industry... I'm not saying there's anything wrong with requiring labels, so people know what they're eating. Just saying, as far as anyone knows, there's nothing specifically wrong with the stuff.

by Pathos at 5:11 PM on 16 Oct 2007

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