Wine varieties are on display. (Photo : Reuters)
A lawsuit filed on Thursday at the Los Angeles Superior Court claims that several cheap wines such as Franzia, Wine Cube and others contain levels of arsenic that are above the healthy standard.
A total of 83 wines were listed in the lawsuit. The suit is claiming that the wine brands contained unsafe levels of arsenic compared to drinking water standards.
Some of the wine producers listed include more than a dozen from California, including Korbel, Sutter Home, Fetzer, Two-Buck Chuck and Beringer among others.
The winemakers involved said that they were going to challenge the lawsuit's allegations against them, according to SF Gate.
"While we do not comment on pending litigation, we are investigating the matter with several of our wine-producing suppliers," said Rachel Broderick, a spokeswoman for Trader Joe's.
Broderick said that Trader Joe's will not offer their customers any product that they think is not safe and that they do not believe that the wines they sell are harmful to consumers.
Korbel said their products are "perfectly safe."
The lawsuit was filed by four separate consumers of wine from Southern California.
Brian Kabateck, the plaintiffs' lawyer, said that the lawsuit was due to an arsenic level test involving 1,306 wines.
Out of all the tested wines, 83 was found to have toxic levels of arsenic and is considered harmful for human consumption. Kabateck said that almost all of the listed wines were cheap.
Nancy Light, a spokesperson for the Wine Institute, said that the lawsuit has no merit and that it is all a publicity campaign, ABC 30 reported.
Meanwhile, San Joaquin Valley Winegrowers Association's Peterangelo Vallis explained that all of their wine come from the same water and soil and that there is no arsenic that can be detected.
