Kentucky Fried Chicken wants to kill all its customers in Washington, D.C.
That’s the basic thrust of the wacky legal argument offered by the misnamed Center for Science in the Public Interest to justify a lawsuit it filed against KFC last month. The stated aim of the suit is to force the fast-food giant to stop using partially hydrogenated oil to cook its food. CSPI says the oil is full of trans fats, which it says “kills roughly 50,000 Americans per year.”
CSPI does not merely accuse KFC of negligence, however. Instead — get this! — the self-described “consumer advocacy organization” charges in its official court filing that KFC’s use of the type of oil in question was “performed with evil motive, intent to injure [and] ill will.”
Of course, if CSPI gets its way, there’s plenty of money to be had for its chosen agent, retired physician Arthur Hoyte of Rockville and for all other unnamed D.C. residents supposedly represented in the class-action suit. The suit asks for payment for “actual economic damages,” trebled, plus “other economic damages” and “punitive damages,” and courts costs and attorneys fees, in addition to “ordering [KFC] to disgorge all money that has been acquired by means of its unlawful trade practices.”
There’s nothing like getting rich off of altruism.
But back to the merits of the suit, or lack thereof. First, it must be acknowledged that conventional medical wisdom holds that trans fats are more dangerous than other fats and oils. At least in the short run, they have been shown to elevate a body’s levels of so-called “bad cholesterol” while lowering the amount of “good cholesterol.” Most medical experts agree this is bad.
But self-proclaimed “junk science expert” Steven Milloy of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has written that the cholesterol change is only temporary, and that “if there is a risk, it’s too small to measure through standard epidemiologic methodology.” Meanwhile, it cannot be denied that nutritional science is in an almost constant state of flux. Indeed it was less than 20 years ago, in 1988, that CSPI itself recommended that restaurants switch to trans fat-laden oils instead of other sorts of cooking oil: “All told,” CSPI claimed, “the charges against trans fat just don’t stand up. And by extension, hydrogenated oils seem relatively innocent.”
Nevertheless, now CSPI says the stuff is so dangerous that the courts should enjoin restaurants from using it, or at least post public warning notices that they are, in effect, trying to poison the customers with toxic cooking oils.
Never mind that partially hydrogenated oil is perfectly legal, as CSPI’s own executive director, Michael F. Jacobson, himself acknowledged in his press conference announcing the lawsuit: “In 2004, CSPI petitioned the [Food and Drug Administration] to require restaurants to post signs indicating that they prepare foods with trans fats, but the FDA has done nothing. … In 2004 also CSPI petitioned the FDA to essentially ban the use of partially hydrogenated oil. Again, the FDA has not responded.”
Why the D.C. Superior Court should punish KFC for using an entirely legal product is a mystery. Moreover, even though the restaurant company doesn’t post on-site signs warning customers about the oil, it does make nutritional information, including the amount of trans fats, available both on the company web site and in brochures available at the restaurants. Any consumer can see for himself exactly what he would be ingesting, and decide whether to order from the Colonel’s anyway or instead rush to a health food store for some tofu.
Along those lines, Dr. Hoyte’s suit itself contains a huge logical contradiction. According to the suit, the good doctor was particularly concerned about eating healthily: “Dr. Hoyte was aware that the FDA had advised that trans fats were unhealthy and was trying to avoid consuming products that contained trans fat.”
Yet this oh-so-careful doctor, worried silly over trans fats, “on more than one occasion” in 2004 and 2005 went to a restaurant where the chicken is quite visibly fried in vats of oil (or, in the suit’s words, “a hot liquid in the frying equipment seen by consumers”)—and yet he did not even bother to ask what sort of oil was being used, much less ask for a brochure.
Similarly, the suit posits that “American consumers have a growing awareness of trans fat and the need to avoid it.” But if awareness is growing, then why should KFC be punished for the consumers’ choice to partake of the Colonel’s repast anyway? And why would KFC deliberately choose to injure its customers (dead customers obviously can’t buy more chicken) merely out of greed when—as the suit itself notes—there is only a “small cost” of converting the frying equipment, and the other, non-hydrogenated oil “may be” only “slightly more costly” to use than the current stuff?
Perhaps the consumers know, and don’t care. KFC argues that the taste of its famous, super-secret original recipe just doesn’t hold up as well with different cooking oils. In support of that, it should be noted that McDonald’s tried switching oils, but returned to the hydrogenated kind because it could find no substitute that met its standards.
The public, through its own buying and eating choices, can decide what is in its own interests. This lawsuit ought to be deep-fried into oblivion.
Examiner columnist Quin Hillyer is executive editor of The American Spectator.
