Wednesday December 06, 2006

New York City has enacted a ban on the use of trans fats in the city's 20000 or so restaurants.

Listening to a discussion on NPR this morning, I was struck by how the issues are so similar to those being addressed by the computer industry as we work to conform to the RoHS (Removal of Hazardous Substances) requirements imposed by the European Union. As of July 2006, new electronic equipment is required to be free from lead, mercury and a list of other environmentally nasty chemicals. If it isn't, it can't be sold in the EU. Sun has been working hard on this for some time (see our statement here).

A transition like this is far from trivial. First, it involves a complete reevaluation of ones supply chain to ensure all components used in the manufacturing process are themselves RoHS compliant. This may entail switching to new vendors who are best able to supply compliant parts. In some cases, entirely new manufacturing processes may be required as the underlying chemistry is made compliant. And a lot of effort is required to ensure that the quality of final products is maintained through the transition, which can be quite difficult given that a number of very well understood processes with known quality profiles have been discarded. For example, lead solder has been ubiquitous: No more lead, no more lead solder. So the industry is now gaining experience with new soldering techniques.

Restaurant owners face similar challenges. Are the foods they use in their recipes free of trans fats? If not, they will need to work with their suppliers to fix this, or find new suppliers. Recipes are another issue since they may need to be re-formulated to use different ingredients to offer the same quality dining experience to customers. Some kinds of food will be more difficult to reformulate than others, but, hey, I guess those are the ones that are really bad for you anyway, right?

I'm generally not a fan of heavy-handed government, but our country is careening out of control from a health perspective and there are few to none naturally occurring forces that combat this slide. If this is what it takes, then so be it.

In closing, a piece of trivia for you to use in your next discussion with friends about the ban. Canola oil is often cited as a much healthier alternative oil to replace trans fats. Many people do not know that "Canola" is an acronym for CANadian Oil Low Acid. Canola oil is actually a kind of rapeseed oil.