If the Associated Press Wrote Product Warnings

Recently I came across a very disturbing news item on Yahoo. Here is a quote:

"More and more foods bear a mishmash of warnings that they might accidentally contain ingredients that could seriously sicken people with food allergies. Yet there are signs that the labels are creating confusion among families that should heed them — even as new testing shows there is a real, if probably small, chance that foods with even the most vaguely worded warnings truly pose a risk." - Food Label Warnings Seen as Confusing, Yahoo! (AP) News

Thank goodness we have the Associated Press to point out the dangers of unclear writing, eh? I mean, I think that's what they are pointing out. I read that paragraph six times and I'm still not entirely sure. Every time I think I've got a choke-hold on one of those sentences, it twitches and lurches in some wholly unexpected direction. Now if it was me, I'd write something like:

You know those labels that you see all over food packages these days that warn you that the food might contain peanuts or something? Aren't those things confusing? And now there are tests that show that some of those products really might be dangerous to some people, so it would probably be good to have clearer warnings.

But then I'm not a trained Associated Press professional. It's too bad, in fact, that we couldn't get the AP to write those food warning labels. I'm thinking something along these lines:

Associate Press Peanut Butter (Crunchy Style)
This product -- quite possibly among others -- is likely to contain ingredients which, although generally deemed safe, may nevertheless cause problems not generally anticipated by those most concerned with such warnings. These ingredients -- even the safest of them -- have the potential, if present in the product, to cause such harm in even the remotest quantities, to those whose tolerance is well below the accepted threshold. Caution is advised.

Associated Press Low-Tar Cigarettes
There is new evidence that ingredients of these cigarettes -- possibly present in quantities thought to be below acceptable levels -- may not significantly reduce the amelioration of their reputed ill effects. Smokers, excepting those not concerned with decreasing the improbability of incidental harm associated with the lack of compounds counteracting potentially carcinogenic substances, are urged to consider reducing the rate at which their consumption of chemicals in this class is combined with the augmentation of the reaction of other naturally occurring compounds, whose volatility may require additional precautions -- although only under extreme conditions.

Associated Press Industrial Herbicide
Herbicides in this class manufactured between 1999 and 2007, in compliance with U.S. and international pesticide restrictions -- though not inclusive of local and municipal ordinances -- necessitate the implementation of a (generally biweekly, although varying environmental considerations in some zones may require daily evaluation of this frequency) recalibration of abatement schedules designed to reduce, but not eliminate, the reliance on reversion techniques employed to augment blanket reduction of post-use (and in some areas, pre-use) degradation of potentially harmful compounds, and may, in some cases (depending on absorption rates and tolerance-induced re-uptake considerations), warrant the gradual decrease of overall concentration of associated compounds in the affected areas. Failure to comply with this warning is a federal offense.

Just imagine the number of lives the prevention of whose premature foreshortening might be forestalled by the augmentation of these warnings. Makes you think, doesn't it?

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