California Proposition 65

Why you’re seeing a Prop 65 notice

California’s Proposition 65 (Health & Safety Code §25249.6) requires businesses to provide a warning to Californians before exposing them to chemicals that the State of California has listed as causing cancer or reproductive harm. The list includes hundreds of substances, among them elements like lead.

Lead occurs naturally in soil. Crops that grow in soil — chile peppers, root vegetables, leafy greens, grains, spices, and most other produce — can absorb trace amounts of these naturally occurring elements as they grow. This is true of farmland everywhere, and it is why Prop 65 notices appear on a wide range of everyday foods and products sold into California, from chocolate and coffee to spices, seafood, and fresh and dried vegetables.

If you received a notice with your order or scanned a code on an insert card, it is because your order shipped to a California address and the law applies to products delivered there.

The problem: private enforcement

Prop 65 is enforced mostly by private parties, not by the state. Under the law, private plaintiffs’ attorneys can serve businesses with “60-day notices” of alleged violations and then collect attorney’s fees when cases settle. The scale is striking: in June 2025 alone, roughly 400 such notices were served on businesses.

Settlements routinely cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the payments are dominated by attorney’s fees rather than anything that benefits consumers. For a small family food business, responding to even a single notice can cost more than a year’s profit — a burden wildly out of proportion to any consumer benefit, and one that falls hardest on the small farms and food makers the law was never meant to target.

We comply with the law. We also believe the way its private-enforcement system is being used deserves a hard look from the people who wrote it.

Take action

If you agree, it takes about two minutes to ask your California legislators to reform Prop 65’s private-enforcement system. California legislators take constituent messages through their district web contact forms (not public email), so the steps are:

1. Find your State Senator and Assemblymember using the official lookup below.
2. Open their contact form.
3. Copy the template letter underneath, paste it in, and add your name, city, and ZIP.

Find your California legislators →

Template letter

Tip: click inside the box, select all of the text, and copy it — then paste it into your legislator’s contact form and fill in the bracketed parts.

Subject: Please reform Proposition 65 private enforcement

Dear [Senator/Assemblymember],

I'm a California consumer. I support the goals of Proposition 65, but its private-enforcement system is being used in ways the voters never intended. Thousands of 60-day notices are served each year, largely by a small number of repeat plaintiffs, and the settlements are dominated by attorney's fees rather than consumer benefit. Small family farms and food producers — selling whole foods that absorb trace elements from soil the way all produce does — face five- and six-figure demands they cannot afford to contest.

Please support reforms that: (1) strengthen certificate-of-merit review before private notices can be served; (2) cap or scrutinize attorney's-fee awards in private Prop 65 settlements; (3) protect small businesses acting in good faith; and (4) clarify the treatment of naturally occurring elements in whole and minimally processed foods.

Thank you,
[Name], [City, ZIP]