Salty Sunflower Seed Suit Fails For Snacker

Are sunflower seeds worth going to court over? Apparently.

Well, for one California woman at least.

Nebraska’s ConAgra Foods, Inc., was sued by an angry sunflower seed eater from California named Aleta Lilly. The federally-required food nutrition label on the package of “David” brand seeds was a fraud, in her opinion. Here’s how the opinion from United States Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit summarized her case:

“…the plaintiff alleges that the tasty coating placed on sunflower seed shells is intended to be ingested – and is ingested – before the inedible shell is spat out and the kernel eaten; that is what is expected before expectoration. Therefore, the sodium content in a “serving” of sunflower seeds, as stated on the package, must include the sodium contained in the edible coating.”

Lilly felt California state consumer laws should be applied. ConAgra disagreed.  The three-judge panel sided with Lilly, stating nothing in federal law should block the lawsuit from proceeding. The ruling came down last month.(Read it here)The issue of whether the labels were misleading was not resolved and will be debated at trial.

There might have been a bit of exasperation expressed in the ruling, authored by Judge Barry G. Silverman:

“Some days we are called upon to consider such profound issues as eleventh-hour death penalty appeals, catastrophic threats to the environment, intense and existential questions of civil and human rights, and the most complicated, controversial problems in civil, criminal and administrative law. Today we consider the coating on sunflower seeds.”

 Another agriculture law case made the news in Nebraska this week.  Read about it here:  

Egg Battle Lands In Court. High Stakes for Farmers and Animal Welfare Group

Egg Battle Lands In Court. High Stakes for Farmers and Animal Welfare Group

Is an egg worth going to court over? How about two billion eggs? When hundreds of millions of dollars and the prospect of increased regulation are at stake, the State of Nebraska joined with chicken farmers with a defiant “Yes!”

Courtesy Photo.com

Many Midwestern farmers make no secret of their disdain for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). In 2008, the group successfully promoted a California ballot initiative regulating how chickens are raised at large production facilities. 

The rules banned housing birds in cages so small chickens are unable to move about. HSUS claims there is “…ample evidence that restriction of normal movement…in cages causes physical harm” and disease. The poultry and egg industries strongly disagree.

The chicken rules could have remained exclusively a California concern, but the law expanded two years later with a ban on out-of-state eggs laid by chickens in pens not conforming to California law. It goes into effect in 2015.

That launched an interstate egg fight. Missouri filed suit in federal court last month claiming it’s an unconstitutional restriction of interstate commerce. Lawyers argued California can’t ban Missouri eggs just because rules governing one set of chicken farmers differ from another.

Nebraska joined the fray on March 5. Gov. Dave Heineman and Attorney General Jon Bruning (a freshly-minted candidate for governor) told farmers at the state’s big ag conference that papers would be filed in support of the lawsuit.

“This is also about the precedent this sets for our beef, swine and dairy producers,” Heineman said in his prepared statement. Bruning called the California law an “unconstitutional attempt to dictate farming practices in our state.”


Kevin Fulton, a Nebraska rancher who represents HSUS in the state responded in a press release distributed by the group. “State lawmakers and agriculture departments have real work to do, and the underlying basis of this lawsuit is to allow the federal government to trump state law as it wishes on agriculture policy,” Fulton is quoted as saying. 

There’s plenty at stake for both sides.

For the Humane Society a victory would sustain one of its major animal welfare campaigns.

For the poultry industry it’s a battle against unwanted regulation and keeping open a major market for fresh eggs. Missouri claims one third of the eggs from that state were sold in California. The American Egg Board ranks Nebraska ninth in the nation for the number of laying hens (9.2 million hens, more than 2 BILLION eggs a year!). That’s more hens than Missouri and a $180 million business in Nebraska.

The case is months away from being heard at trial.

No Jail Likely In Deadly Cantaloupe Case

Eating cantaloupe made six Nebraskans very, very sick. 

One 81 year-old-man from Chadron died.  

The Colorado farmers who grew fruit tainted with Listeria will be in Federal District Court in Denver later this month for sentencing.  The brothers who own Jensen Farms, Eric and Ryan Jensen, were charged with six criminal counts of selling an adulterated food in 2011.  

According to TheGrower.com, a news site for the produce industry, the Jensen brothers struck a deal with the U.S. Attorney that will keep the farmers out of jail.  They could have been sentenced up to six years in federal prison.

Distribution of cantaloupe food poisoning cases. (Map: CDC)

The food poisoning outbreak prompted a massive investigation by the Centers for Disease Control to trace the source of the bacteria that killed 33 people and sickened another 147 in 28 states.  The CDC traced it back to melons grown on the Jensen's Colorado farm.

(Read the summary of the investigation here) 

Among the dead was George Drinkwater of Chadron, Neb. who ate the tainted melon for breakfast a couple of days in a row.  TheGrower.com reports there are currently 66 civil lawsuits pending across the country, filed by victims and their family members against the Jensens, distributor Frontera Produce, a food safety auditing company, PrimusLabs, and grocery stores that sold the cantaloupe, including WalMart. 

The Jensens filed their own lawsuit against Primus claiming they would not have shipped their fruit if the auditor had done its job and reported back that their operation was not up to standards.