FDA Report Urges Fish Consumption Despite Scientific Evidence

A new FDA report, still in draft form, says that Americans should eat more fish despite health warnings about mercury levels.  What is wrong with the FDA?  1) The negative health affects of eating mercury-laden fish are still very worrisome.   And, 2) the world’s fish populations are severely overfished as it is.

Imagine how low fish populations would be if people followed the FDA’s advice to eat at least 12 ounces a week.  The disappearance of the world’s fish has been a conservationist’s nightmare come true.  The Economist just had an article about the near extinction of bluefin tuna; the consensus reached by the European Union about bluefin catch limits aren’t enough to ward off depletion according to computer modeling of the species population:

Computer modelling of the species’s population earlier this year, by the Technical University of Denmark, concluded that, even if fishing for bluefin were banned, stocks in the north-east Atlantic and Mediterranean were so badly damaged that they would probably collapse anyway. Conservationists may now take another approach and try to persuade CITES, the international convention that regulates trade in endangered species, to put bluefin on its list of those threatened with extinction.

Thus, encouraging people to eat (that much) fish is simply negligent behavior from both an educational standpoint and a scientific perspective.  The Washington Post reiterates:

The FDA’s recommendations have alarmed scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, who in internal memos criticized them as “scientifically flawed and inadequate” and said they fell short of the “scientific rigor routinely demonstrated by EPA.”

Not only is the FDA’s report ecologically damaging, it is also nutritionally deceptive. As Erick Marcus points out…

…the article (and presumably the report) fails to distinguish between fatty, cold water fish — which is loaded with beneficial Omega 3s — and other sorts of fish that carry none of these benefits. And finally, there’s not a word in the article about flax and other vegan sources of Omega 3; considering Omega 3s can be obtained without endangering fish populations and without exposing people to mercury, it’s irresponsible that the government consistently fails to publicize this fact.

Obviously, the FDA needs to review the report’s recommendations with a greater understanding of its ecological and nutritional consequences.  The flawed report also serves to highlight the urgency with which this country needs a governmental agency whose focus is on food safety and consumer health.  That food policy makers have become a ”patsy for polluters” (link) should scare the public into action.  Consumer and environmental health should not be sold to the industry with the greatest number of lobbyists.

December 17, 2008  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Health, Politics, Science & Technology

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