“Beware of e. coli in fast-food burgers! Too much vitamin C ruins your liver! Tuna can poison you with mercury!” San Francisco Chronicle columnist Joan Ryan implores. “Caffeine, sugar, white flour, milk, television, video games, fake nails, red meat, red dye, non-organic produce, electrical lines, hair spray, plastic containers, UV rays, diet teas, fat of all kinds — the dangers, people, are everywhere! Details at 11!”
Before September 11, Ryan continues, “we had so little to be truly frightened of that we went to remarkable lengths to scare ourselves.” The anti-consumer-choice zealots should join the rest of us in the world of reality. But so far, they’ve shown no signs of doing so. Just a week after September 11, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) was picketing Starbucks locations in over 300 U.S. cities — including New York and Washington. The Animal Liberation Front even came forward on the day of the attacks to take credit for the torching of a Tucson McDonald’s.
