By Chuck Muth

"CAUTION: The Attorney General has determined that cooking food may be harmful to your health."

Don't laugh. That ridiculous warning label could actually soon appear on bags of Mickey D's fries or Lay's BBQ chips. For that matter, you might also find it on your next loaf of Wonder Bread, your next box of Cheerios, your next cup of Starbuck's coffee - even your next bottle of prune juice. That is, if California's lawsuit-happy publicity-hound attorney general has his way.

On Friday, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer sued Burger King, McDonald's, Wendy's, KFC, Lay's potato chips, Pringles, Kettle Chips, Cape Cod potato chips and Ore-Ida frozen potatoes. His lawsuit is based on a junk science claim that the potato products produced and sold by these nine companies contain a dangerous cancer-causing chemical - and by golly, the public must be protected! The attorney general is demanding that the courts require these companies to post warning labels on their products and/or in their restaurants.

Warning labels. On French fries and potato chips. Isn't that how the whole tobacco lawsuit frenzy got started?

The brouhaha this time is over acrylamide, an industrial chemical used in treating sewage. However, a 2002 study by the Swedish National Food Authority reported that traces of acrylamide also could be found NATURALLY in some foods when cooked or heated. Those foods include bread, cereals, chips, fries, coffee, asparagus, olives and, yes, prune juice. But not Swedish meatballs. Go figure.

"Acrylamide has been present in the food supply and safely consumed since human beings discovered that cooked food tastes good and is often safer than the raw form," noted a coalition of food producers in a statement responding to the lawsuit. Indeed, although the Swedes found acrylamide occurring naturally when cooking food, Tim Malloy of the Associated Press reports that other studies "have found no link between food containing acrylamide and a higher risk of cancer."

The key words here are "no link." But Bill Lockyer isn't letting the facts stand in the way of a good headline-grabbing, money-grubbing lawsuit. No, siree.

Lockyer is basing his lawsuit on a ballot proposition passed in California way back in 1986 - the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. Which is yet another lesson to melonheads who vote for innocent-sounding ballot initiatives and legislation without reading the fine print. In any event, industrial acrylamide was added to the law's list of toxic chemicals in 1990, before the Swedes discovered it in small amounts in baked, roasted, fried and toasted foods.

So now Lockyer and a gaggle of Chicken Little health nanny organizations want to force unnecessary "sky is falling" toxic warning labels on potato chips and fries. An attorney for one of those organizations - the Council for Education & Research on Toxics (CERT), which is joining Lockyer in the lawsuit - told reporters, "CERT looks forward to jointing prosecuting this claim with the AG against McDonald's and Burger King to protect the public from this substantial hazard to the public health."

Substantial hazard to the public health? An order of fries? A bag of chips? A sandwich? A bowl of cereal? PRUNE JUICE? Forget acrylamide. Who's gonna protect the public from these tort-happy McClowns?

By the way, did I mention that this is how the tobacco lawsuit craze got started? Warning labels on the sides of a pack of smokes. That's all. Just warning labels. And lot of you didn't give a lab rat's butt when the government was going after big, bad Big Tobacco. But now that you've let that camel's nose under the tent you have lawyers like Lockyer going after Big Fast Food, Big French Fry, Big Potato Chip, Big Bread, Big Cereal and Big Prune Juice. Happy now?

And don't think these people will stop here. After they're finished with Ronald McDonald and the Frito Bandito, how long do you think it will be before the local Department of Child Protective Services starts going after parents who "abuse" their children by not raising them on a strict diet of raw vegetables and sushi?

Don't laugh. It's coming.

A brand-new junk science study just came out which "shows" that American nurses who were fed one additional serving of French fries per week between the ages of three and five had a 27 percent increased risk of getting breast cancer. I say this is junk science because the results are based on what the mothers of adult breast cancer patients remember feeding their kids 20, 30 and 40 years ago.

Heck, I can't remember what I fed my kids last WEEK - although I'd bet my bottom dollar it included some potato chips and French fries. Which I guess means I'm trying to give my girls breast cancer. Which makes me an unfit parent. And probably means I'll one day be subject to criminal prosecution, or at the very least a civil lawsuit. Unless, of course, a sane judge in California says enough is enough, puts his or her foot down, and throws out Lockyer's frivolous lawsuit.

So our future depends on finding a sane judge or jury to hear this case...in California? We're doomed.

Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a non-profit public policy advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Citizen Outreach. He may be reached at chuck@citizenoutreach.com.