The state of California has had it's knuckles rapped by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over warnings on canned tuna.
The FDA says the state's attempt to require mercury warnings on tuna conflicts with federal law.
But California's attorney general has disputed this and says the FDA move is an attempt to stop a lawsuit the state has filed against tuna companies over the warnings.
According to Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the federal government has no authority to prevent California, or any other state, from requiring warnings that provide truthful, important information to consumers.
It was a year ago that Lockyer sued the nation's three largest canned tuna companies in an attempt to enforce Proposition 65, a 1968 California law which requires businesses to provide "clear and reasonable" warnings when they expose consumers to known reproductive toxins, such as mercury.
The three companies sued were Tri-Union Seafoods, maker of Chicken of the Sea; Del Monte, maker of Starkist; and Bumble Bee Seafoods, maker of Bumble Bee.
In a letter written by Commissioner Lester Crawford on Aug. 12, the FDA argues that the warnings Lockyer is seeking to have enforced are pre-empted under federal law.
Crawford says in his letter that such warnings "frustrate the carefully considered federal approach to advising consumers of both the benefits and possible risks of eating fish and shellfish".
According to the FDA the best way to warn consumers about health risks is with advisories, which target specific audiences, delivered by doctors or certain media outlets.
General warning labels they say can overexpose consumers, and possibly scare the wrong audience away from food they should be eating.