ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Britain and Australia both have images of Queen Elizabeth on their money, use the metric system, and add the letter “u” to words like “color.” Soon they could have another thing in common: Neither will have branding on their cigarette packages.

Britain’s health ministry is proposing to follow Australia’s lead in banning colors, logos and attractively presented identification on cigarette packages. Don’t worry, the images of dead fetuses and gangrene feet will still be required.

Nonsmokers on both sides of the Atlantic should take note. The bureaucrats who micromanage tobacco branding have their other hand on food and drinks that — unlike cigarettes — haven’t been found to be harmful when consumed in moderation.

However, in the cause of protecting public health, these hyperactive busybodies are trying to regulate “food speech.” First Amendment be damned — if they don’t control food speech, activists say you’ll eat too much.

To select just one example, activist groups including the Center for Science in the Public Interest would like to introduce “traffic light” labeling on your potato chips. Under this system, a green decal would mean the product is good for you, red — the product is bad, and yellow — well, roll the dice.

But the simplistic good-bad food dichotomy is not acceptable. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is the same group that promoted trans fats before calling for their elimination. That’s not the only nutritional science flip-flop that clearly shows such a system is far too simplistic.

High-fat, low-sugar foods like Greek yogurt may have received a red light a few years ago. Today — with nutritionists’ recent about-face on the healthfulness of fat — it would likely score a virtuous green one. Same story for butter, eggs and the countless other products that shift back and forth, depending on what the latest small-scale study finds.

Perhaps the biggest branding regulation being pushed at the moment is the one to label genetically improved foods. Activists argue that such labels should exist because consumers have a “right to know.” A voluntary labeling system — the organic label — already recognizes foods that do not use genetic engineering. Additional labeling would be redundant to anybody but the organic lobby. They hope to scare consumers into believing the tin-hat theory that genetically improved foods are somehow harmful.

These noxious attempts at branding regulations violate the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. Just as the government is not allowed to control what comes out of your mouth, it should generally not be allowed to dictate the packaging color of what goes into it. Branding is how companies identify themselves, and a brand or trademark is often the most important thing that a company owns. According to the market-research company Millward Brown, brand names account for more than 30 percent of the stock market value of the S&P 500.

It’s one thing to regulate when products are risky or dangerous to certain people: We have rules in place for those situations. But a good idea can always be taken too far. California requires warnings on everything that might conceivably cause cancer or birth defects. California being California, there are now health warning labels on everything from fishing rods to Christmas lights.

Court decisions aside, proponents of brand regulation argue that free-speech rights should not extend to corporations. However, those same commentators would find an excuse to oppose branding regulation or warnings for The New York Times (a publicly traded corporation), despite its elitist food writers promoting various products without disclaimers. It always amazes how some suffer from this cognitive dissonance. In “Alice in Wonderland” it was the Red Queen who cautioned Alice, “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Too many of us live in that same illogical world.

• Richard Berman is president of Berman and Co., a Washington public affairs firm.

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