In a perfect example of the changing media attitude toward science-based information concerning seafood advice, NFIs registered dietitian, Jennifer McGuire, was given the opportunity last week to clear up some confusing recommendations from Mens Health editor Eric Adams. In an earlier interview with local DC radio station WTOP, Adams touted the widely misused FDA seafood guidance for pregnant women as the advice everyone should follow, including the magazines largely male audience. According to Adams, we should be reducing the amount of canned tuna we eat each week, with albacore tuna limited to only 6 ounces a week.

After a quick response from NFI explaining the discrepancies in Adams recommendation (including the fact that that advice is meant for pregnant women ONLY), McGuire was invited on the show Friday night to correct these common misconceptions on seafood advice.

Check out Jennifer McGuires interview here.

Anyone watching Mondays episode of THE DOCTORS would have been better served by Lucy van Pelts nickel clinic. The segment was titled, Healthy Habits That Are Bad for You! And for nearly five minutes, four celebrity physicians (aka, The Doctors) recklessly disregarded scientific consensus from hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and articles. They even went against the advice of Health and Human Services Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the Institute of Medicine and the World Health Organization. In short, they told millions of viewers that eating seafood was a bad healthy habit. What ever happened to do no harm?

Back in the real world where eating seafood is not only good for you, but also not eating enough can be harmful we set out once again to remind The Doctors that their profession is based on science not speculation (and presumably optimal health, not ratings). You can read our letter below.

May 2, 2012

Mr. Jay McGraw
President and CEO
Stage 29 Productions, LLC
137 North Larchmont Boulevard, #705
Los Angeles, CA 90004

Dear Mr. McGraw:

On behalf of the National Fisheries Institute, I am writing concerning the inaccurate, misleading, and damaging statements made about seafood during The Doctors episode that aired nationwide on April 30, 2012.
These misleading statements included, but were not limited to claims that:

• Studies show that eating fish may not be as healthy as you think.
• Many popular varieties of fish are packed with mercury.
• The #1 source [of mercury in seafood] is from burning fossil fuels.
• If you stick to one serving [of fish] a week, you will stay well within the limits and then you dont have to necessarily worry about what kind of fish if you do it once a week. [sic]
• [Mercury poisoning] happens. It happened to that actor Jeremy Piven.

Not only are these statements harmful to Americans, theyre erroneous and inconsistent with peer-reviewed science. Furthermore, these statements can be damaging to public health. Research shows statements like these lead individuals to curtail the amount of seafood they eat, or eliminate it from their diets altogether.
Here are the facts that were inexplicably absent from your broadcast:

• A panel of 13 nutrition experts and physicians reviewed 37 peer-reviewed studies to inform the current Dietary Guidelines for Americans; those guidelines say that consuming a variety of seafood no less than twice a week is integral to a healthy diet. Further,
• Eat at least 8 ounces (2 servings) of seafood per week to reduce your risk of dying from heart disease.
• Pregnant and breastfeeding women should eat at least 8 ounces and up to 12 ounces (up to 3 servings) of cooked seafood per week to boost babys brain and eye development.
• A panel of 17 nutrition experts, physicians and toxicologist reviewed 150 studies and articles to inform the most recent World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Joint Expert Consultation on the Risks and Benefits of Fish Consumption. The WHO/FAO report also recommends eating fish to reduce the risk of dying from heart disease and communicating the risk that a diet deficient in seafood risks missing out on heart health protection.

Its a regrettable fact that Americans eat less than half of the amount of seafood recommended in the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans and by experts with the World Health Organization.

• Additionally, a study published in the Public Library of Science recently estimated 84,000 preventable deaths a year are attributable to seafood deficient diets in the United States.
• The most comprehensive study on seafood consumption, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found “avoidance of modest fish consumption due to confusion regarding risks and benefits could result in thousands of excess coronary heart disease deaths annually and suboptimal neurodevelopment in children.”
• The 10 most popular fish Americans enjoy today represent nearly 90 percent of all of the fish we eat and all 10 species are low in mercury and fall well within the U.S. governments very conservative safety guidelines.
• Trace amounts of organic mercury found in commercial seafood come primarily from underwater volcanoes and mineral deposits. It does not come from pollutants emitted from coal-fired power plants. This is not a new phenomenon; tiny amounts of mercury have been released into the ocean for millennia. In fact, methylmercury levels in commercial seafood are nearly identical to levels recorded over the last 100 years.
• Studies show that children of women who consume the most omega-3-rich fish while pregnant score the highest on intelligence and motor-skills tests. And children whose mothers eat no fish during pregnancy (getting no omega-3s in their diet) are 29 percent more likely to have abnormally low IQs.
• There are no cases of mercury poisoning from the normal consumption of commercial found in ay per-reviewed published medical journal in this country. In fact, according to the CDC, “finding a measureable amount of mercury in blood or urine does not mean that levels of mercury cause an adverse effect.” The alleged example used on your show actor Jeremy Pivens feigned ailment is anecdotal, not scientifically sound, and has been widely questioned and criticized, even ridiculed.

The irrefutable science demonstrates that Americans are simply not in danger from normalconsumption of seafood. The real, scientifically measurable concern is low seafood consumption.

Based on these facts, we formally request that you take the following steps immediately:

• Remove from your website the misleading and inflammatory section: Signs of Mercury Poisoning.
• Post the facts presented here on your website as well as the University of North Dakotas two-minute video that speaks to Seafood Deficiency in the American Diet.
• Delete the offending mercury segment from this episode before it is aired again, or pull the entire episode from any repeat schedule.
• Make sure that the science-based facts presented here are included in any future episodes that mention mercury and seafood.

If you have any questions, or need further information, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Gavin Gibbons
Director, Media Relations

cc: Nicole Harris Johnson
Vice President CBS Television Distribution, Business and Legal Affairs
2401 Colorado Avenue, Suite 110
Santa Monica, CA 90404

John Nogawski
President
CBS Television Distribution
2401 Colorado Avenue, Suite 90404

Carla Pennington
Executive Producer
Stage 29 Productions, LLC

Dr. Travis Stork
Dr. Jim Sears
Dr. Drew Ordon
Dr. Lisa Masterson

Once again, the Huffington Post misleads readers on canned tuna and its environmental impacts. Huff Po presents uncited, out of context information in the form of a slideshow. It would appear that grabbing as many page views as possible, instead of educating readers is a priority at the Huffington Post.

The outlets latest misstep is an Earth Day compilation of animal products supposedly responsible for high CO₂ emissions; canned tuna is incorrectly categorized as one of those. For starters, a discussion on how raising fish and animals affects the environment merits a substantive examination of hard scientific research, not a slideshow of endearing photos of animals with barely-legible text. And, the information included, which (again) the Huffington Post fails to cite, directly stems from a report on animal proteins by the Environmental Working Group (EWG). This activist organization is hardly a credible source; it has no scientists on its staff and continuously pushes biased reports created to promote the groups overall agenda.

Another perpetual offender is Greenpeace. Its solution to sustainable fisheries management is to ban the use of nets set on fish aggregating devices (FADs) in favor of pole-and-line fishing. But real science discredits Greenpeaces proposed panacea; pole-and-line fishing requires nearly 300 percent more fuel. Not to mention the little caveat that there is virtually no way pole-and-line fishing could deliver enough tuna to meet global demand. So, theres that.

The International Sustainability Seafood Foundation (ISSF) found that tuna fisheries are actually much less energy-intensive than many livestock-derived protein sources. As University of Washington Professor Ray Hilborn points out, If we stopped fishing, we would need to convert a lot of rainforest to agricultural production and increasing dependency on other land protein sources would increase those products emissions.

Figuring out how to ensure the sustainability of tuna stocks while considering environmental impact is definitely not as cut and dry as the Huffington Post and activists make it seem. Luckily, the tuna industry already knows this and is collaborating with scientists, conservationists and environmentalists to put in place the best methods of raising, catching and packaging tuna for everyone.

Heres an Op Ed that ran today in the Washington Times by NFI Vice President Mary Anne Hansan:

HANSAN: Enviros to babies: We hope youre born dumb

Eco-falsehoods about mercury in fish expose activists who put politics before health

Thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), everyone will breathe a little easier in the new year, apparently, as the agency begins enforcing tougher emission standards on coal-fired power plants. It was a cause celebre for the Sierra Club and its inside-the-Beltway campaign “Beyond Coal,” which exposed Washingtonians to endless ads of coughing babies and tuna-fish sandwiches.

What’s the connection between power plants and tuna-fish sandwiches? There is none.

So what gives?

A tuna-fish sandwich is iconic – it evokes memories of brown-bag lunches, picnics and late-night snacks. In a word: wholesome. Which is why, perhaps, activists were quick to conflate it with “coal on whole wheat.” A Sierra Club executive told a reporter recently, “Mercury pollution from coal-fired plants affects us every day, from the can of tuna fish we eat to the air we breathe.”

It was a catchy quote, but entirely untrue.

For far too long, environmental groups have been given free rein to say whatever they want because we assume they have our – and our planet’s – best interests at heart. But increasingly, as in this case, their assertions fly in the face of sound scientific evidence, with reporters recording each one without question. So much for the old journalist creed: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

This is a very dangerous trend. The Sierra Club got a free pass when it plastered commuter rail cars and websites with advertisements designed to scare pregnant women into thinking a womb is a “reservoir of mercury” delivered simply by eating tuna. That’s patently false. Even worse, it hurts the very people it purports to protect: pregnant women and children. Study after study shows that babies need the nutrients in seafood for optimal development in utero.

Yet no one questioned the Sierra Club’s tactics, let alone exposed its ulterior motive – not the media, the EPA or even the Department of Health and Human Services, which issued the following recommendation in its latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans: “Eat atleast 8 and up to 12 ounces of seafood every week during pregnancy and breastfeeding.”

No one pointed to well-publicized research led by the National Institutes of Health, which concluded that children whose mothers eat no fish during pregnancy are 29 percent more likely to have abnormally low IQs.

No one looked to specialists with the Harvard School of Public Health, either, or its study that calculated that 84,000 people die each year because they don’t get enough of the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish. Another found eating seafood once or twice a week could reduce the risk of coronary disease by 36 percent and the overall risk of death by 17 percent, concluding, “Seafood is likely the single most important food one can consume for good health.”

Clearly, no one spoke with experts at the Institute of Medicine (IOM), who found “confusion may have scared people out of eating something that is beneficial for them. People should not be scared about eating seafood.”

But the Sierra Club scared people with its lobbying campaign – inventing a narrative in its favor regardless of the consequences.

Let’s stop assuming that the environmental lobby always has our best interests at heart and start using our heads. The facts are clear and easy to find:

– Tuna is commercially fished from oceans – not rivers and lakes susceptible to industrial pollutants.

– All commercially caught fish contain trace amounts of organic mercury released from underwater vents and volcanoes – a natural phenomenon that has continued uninterrupted for millions of years.

– Trace amounts of mercury in the commercial seafood we eat are nearly identical to levels recorded over the past 100 years.

– Pregnant women aren’t eating nearly enough seafood. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the average pregnant woman eats less than 2 ounces of fish per week – a paltry amount for her and her developing child.

When it comes to reading about human nutrition in the mainstream press, ask yourself why more and more quoted sources represent environmental organizations that are not registered dieticians, physicians or credentialed authors of peer-reviewed research. We would never take our car to a restaurant and ask the chef to rebuild the transmission, and yet by some strange voodoo, environmental activists are allowed to decide what is and is not healthy for us.

As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan quipped, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Good public policy should stand on its own merits, and there are far better ways to lobby for a cause than to jeopardize the health and well-being of pregnant women and children.

In case you came across this AARP blog posting today Just How Healthy is Seafood? You should know we did too. And we felt it was a touch light on well facts and science. So, NFIs registered dietitian reached out with the letter you can read below.

In retrospect we found it kind of odd that AARP would join the relatively uninformed, hand-wringing crowd that we find so often in the blogosphere humming rhythmically to themselves while fretting about the dangers of seafood that someone at an environmental outfit once told themrather than just going right to a nutrition expert. Especially perplexing given that AARP recently provided its readers with a 700 word write up on how good fish is for brain health, complete with quotes from real-life medical doctors and researchers.

Todays blog even touches on the hyperbolic PCB myth; not realizing of course that seafood accounts for 9 percent of the PCBs found in the average American diet, while vegetables account for 20 percent. I somehow doubt AARP will soon pen a blog titled Just How Healthy Are Vegetables?

January 18, 2012

Pam Evan

AARP

Sustainability Manager

VIA Email

Dear Pam,

In reading your blog today I understand your confusion about seafood because the media is notorious for scary seafood stories. A recent study from John Hopkins University found that risk messages about fish in the news outweigh benefit messages four to one. Meanwhile, the published studies about the heart and brain benefits of seafood continue to mount. There are few, if any, foods with more scientific evidence supporting their contribution to health. According to preeminent nutrition researcher, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian of the Harvard School of Public Health, It is striking how much greater both the amount of the evidence and the size of the health effect are for health benefits, compared with health risks. Seafood is likely the single most important food one can consume for good health.

To get clear up confusion and get the science-based message out, please take note of the following facts:

1. The pigment in both wild and farm-raised salmon (as well as most other similarly colored fish like shrimp) comes from the same nutrient, astaxanthin. In the wild, it is found in algae, krill, etc. and works its way up to fish. In aquaculture, it is included as a supplement in the food the salmon eat. Salmon need this nutrient to live and humans benefit from its antioxidant properties as well.

2. The overall effect of eating seafood, traces of mercury and all, has been exhaustively reviewed and the findings are crystal clear: The real risk associated with fish is not eating enough.

According to a new report from the World Health Organization we need to emphasize not only the fact that eating fish reduces your risk of dying from a heart attack, but also not eating fish increases your risk for dying from a heart attack. Similarly, plenty of fish during pregnancy and breastfeeding boosts brain development in babies, and not eating fish means possibly missing out on this brain boost.

Following suit with this guidance, the new 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans contain a pointed recommendation for families to increase the amount and variety of seafood they eat each week from 3.5 ounces (current consumption levels) to at least 8 ounces (2-3 servings). The Guidelines specifically recommend pregnant and nursing moms eat no less than 8 and up to 12 ounces (2-3 servings) of seafood each week to boost brain and eye development in babies. Up to half (6 ounces) of the amount of seafood pregnant women eat each week can be albacore tuna. And there are four rarely eaten species for this population to avoid: shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish.

A quick way to get bad info on this is to stray from credentialed sources like registered dietitians, physicians, and authoritative health organizations like the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization. Just like personal trainers or hair stylists, environmental activist organizations like Environmental Defense Fund are not qualified to give sound nutrition advice.

3. AARP readers definitely need to know that, just like seafood helps build our brains when were babies, it helps keep our minds sharp as we age. The Alzheimers Association recommends people increase their intake of brain-protective foods like halibut, mackerel, salmon, trout, and tuna. Research shows that, globally, older people are less and less likely to develop dementia as they eat more and more fish.

To help clear up the confusion you noted in your piece I am requesting with this letter that AARP allow me the opportunity to submit the latest, most scientifically accurate information about seafood consumption as a guest blogger. I would be happy to specifically tailor such a column to the audience you serve.

Sincerely,

Jennifer McGuire MS RD

Manager of Nutrition Communications

National Fisheries Institute

cc Alejandra Owens

Managing Editor

AARP Blog

Carolyn Hall

Managing Editor

AARP.org

Consumers have been hammered over the last few weeks with a slew of common and calculated pieces of misinformation about mercury in seafood. Not as part of a public education campaign gone awry or faulty reporting, but as part of a targeted lobbying campaign that has nothing to do with fish and that you wont hear hide nor hair of next week.

The EPA is under a court order to produce new rules that control emissions of mercury and other airborne toxins generated by electric utilities, and the deadline is today. But next week, when the Sierra Club and its extremist friends in Greenpeace quiet down about mercury in seafood, dont think its because theyve seen the error in their rhetoric and are reconsidering. No, theyve known the error in their rhetoric. They know the sceince well but we evenpointed it out to them.

It would appear that Sierra Club lobbyists are willing to live with collateral damage done to ground truth science and American nutrition.

See our letter below.

December 14, 2011

Michael Brune

Executive Director

Sierra Club

85 Second Street, 2nd Floor

San Francisco, CA 94105

Dear Mr. Brune,

We are deeply concerned about how seafood is being portrayed in the Sierra Clubs latest campaign against coal-fueled utilities. While we strongly support efforts to promote a clean, healthy environment, your campaign unfairly and inaccurately maligns seafood to achieve your objective. As a result, your campaign actually hurts the very people it purports to protect: pregnant women and children.

Equating a tuna fish sandwich with “coal on whole wheat” is reckless and willfully disregards environmental realities, government nutrition guidelines and peer-reviewed scientific evidence. Worst of all, it misinforms and jeopardizes the health of vulnerable populations.

Internationally recognized authorities including but not limited to the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United States Department of Agriculture, and Harvard School of Public Health all agree that the predominant risk associated with eating commercial seafood is not eating enough. For pregnant women and new mothers in particular, that means denying their children essential nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids, which help babies eyes and brains develop normally.

Your campaign posters pointing to a pregnant womans child in utero and referring to her womb as a “reservoir of mercury” and “full of joy, love, smiles and mercury” are irresponsible when associated with seafood consumption. Here are the facts your campaign so blatantly disregards:

Fishing in lakes versus oceans

The vast majority of Americans eat commercial seafood from oceans or aquaculture. While power plant pollution can contaminate inland waterways and freshwater fish, it certainly does not correlate to tuna, which thrive in the ocean. The vast majority of the trace amounts of methylmercury indigenous to all ocean seafood are the result of underwater thermal activity and mineral deposits a phenomenon that has continued uninterrupted for millennia. In fact, methylmercury levels in commercial seafood are nearly identical to levels recorded over the last 100 years. Californias judiciary ruled on this very issue on March 11, 2009, noting, “methylmercury in tuna is naturally occurring.” Conflating mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants with methylmercury generated by underwater ocean volcanoes is wrong and deceptive.

Methylmercury

First and foremost: There has never been a confirmed case in a peer-reviewed medical journal of methylmercury poisoning from the normal consumption of commercial seafood in the United States.

Second: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the agency that oversees commercially caught fish enforces 1.0 parts per million (ppm) of mercury in seafood. To put this in the context of your tuna fish/coal sandwich, canned albacore tuna contains 0.35 ppm mercury and canned light tuna contains 0.13 ppm, putting both types nearly three times lower than the safety level.

The U.S. per capita consumption of seafood hovers at just 15.8 pounds a year, as compared to 110 pounds of red meat and 73 pounds of poultry. And the average pregnant woman eats just 1.89 ounces a week, which is less than half a serving, so its dishonest to suggest that a womans womb is fertile ground for mercury poisoning from seafood.

Government recommendations

The 2010 Dietary Guidelines issued by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommend that pregnant women “eat at least 8 and up to 12 ounces of seafood every week during pregnancy and breastfeeding.” Children require their mothers to pass along the unique nutrients in seafood for optimal neurological and eye development.

The only types of fish the USDA and HHS instruct women to completely avoid during pregnancy and breastfeeding are shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) are clear that pregnant and breastfeeding women can eat all types of canned tuna. All U.S. agencies are now on point that outdated and inconsistent guidance need to be aligned with the current dietary policy.

Its a fact that children whose mothers eat no fish during pregnancy are 29% more likely to have abnormally low IQs. Think of the harm your ads cause when you insinuate women shouldnt eat fish.

Like the Sierra Club, we believe in the importance of healthy air and uncontaminated water. But we cannot allow your organization to continue to peddle misinformation that will undoubtedly scare people away from an inherently healthy product like seafood. There are far better ways to lobby for a cause than to jeopardize the health and well-being of pregnant women and children.

Sincerely,

Mary Anne Hansan

Vice President

cc: Robin Mann, president, Sierra Club

Yesterday the Sierra Club posted about mercury on the Huffington Post and unfortunately they chose to make erroneous assertions about seafood throughout the column, rhetoric Huffington Post editors should have flagged, researched and edited themselves. But they failed to. So today were making sure theyre aware of the transgressions.

December 6, 2011

Nico Pitney

Managing Editor

Huffington Post

VIA Email

Dear Mr. Pitney,

Avital Binshtocks December 5^th column titled How To Stay Mercury-Free contains demonstrable errors and falsehoods that editors at the Huffington Post should have caught before publication and should now endeavor to correct.

The column begins by stating that, most mercury poisoning happens by eating contaminated sea animals. This is simply a false assertion. There are no cases of mercury toxicity or poisoning in the U.S. attributed to the normal consumption of commercial seafood in any peer-reviewed published medical journal.

The piece claims air pollution is responsible for the mercury consumers find in seafood. This is also false. The trace amounts of mythelmercury found in ocean-going, commercial seafood are by-in-large naturally occurring and originate from underwater volcanoes. A minimum amount of research would have found that a California Appeals Court even ruled on this very issue on March 11, 2009 writing methylmercury in tuna is naturally occurring.

Later in the column Binshtock distorts Environmental Protection Agency mercury levels when she writes, in the U.S., at least one woman in 12 has enough of this heavy metal in her body to harm a fetus –which means that more than 300,000 babies born each year are at risk of mercury poisoning. This statistics simply ignores the fact that the levels she is referring to have a built in 1,000 percent safety factor. AS an example, if you applied the same math to women in Japan you would find that 66 percent of children there would be born at risk of mercury poising. Clearly there is no mercury poising epidemic among children in Japan or this country for that matter.

We are not opposed to the Sierra Club’s efforts to clean up the environment. We believe in the importance of healthy air and uncontaminated water, but we cannot allow them to peddle misinformation that will undoubtedly scare some consumers away from an inherently healthy product like seafood in an effort to affect unrelated coal regulation.

This column is clearly part of an opinion piece that calls consumers to lobby on behalf of the Sierra Clubs efforts, but scientific falsehoods wrapped in opinion are not any less false. Huffington Post has a responsibility to its readers to ensure that the factual assertions it publishes are in fact accurate, even if they are made as part of an opinion piece.

Thank you for your attention to this important issue. We look forward to hearing from you.

Gavin Gibbons

National Fisheries Institute

cc Stuart Whatley

Deputy Blog Editor

A recent Associated Press article out of Milwaukee got me thinking about last years holiday season and how the misguided activist group GotMercury? decided it would be a good idea to ask charitable organizations not to distribute donations of canned tuna to needy families.Yes, as ridiculous as it sounds they did. Thankfully, food banks coast to coast ignored the sea turtle activist groups absurd rantings and continued to give out healthy canned tuna to families who might otherwise not be able to afford food. This year we see food banks noting that canned tuna is on their list of foods that are healthy [and] in demand. This holiday season lets be thankful all activist groups arent as radical and misguided as GotMercury?

When the Authors of the popular book Eat This Not That decided to take on fish this week apparently they also decided to abandon the idea that authors should a.) do research and b.) that said research should be accurate. In the following letter we ask their editors to well not to put too fine a point on it but do their job.

November 17, 2011

Kevin Donahue

Managing Editor

Men’s Health

Allison Drury

Yahoo Senior Manager

Health & Medicine, Healthcare

VIA Email

Dear Mr. Donahue and Ms. Drury,

I am writing to express serious concern about David Zinczenko with Matt Gouldings recent article, 5 Fish You Should Never Eat.

Throughout the article the authors present poorly, if at all, sourced claims about seafood and mightily distort perspective.

Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

The authors fail to mention when warning consumers away from Atlantic Bluefin tuna that, per capita, Americans eat less than the weight of a few paperclips worth of Bluefin annually. The first fish they warn about is one that is almost never eaten in this country. Whats more, without researching the issue on their own, they refer to a January 2008 New York Times story as a recent analysis and fail to note that said story distorted data, confused consumers and was subsequently publicly discredited byTime magazine, Slate.com, The Center for Independent Media and the Times own public editor.They begin the column by referring to the new USDA Dietary Guidelines, but while wildly exaggerating the impact of mercury, neglect to quote from the same Guidelines that clearly state, the benefits of consuming seafood far outweigh the risks.

Atlantic Salmon

Their critique of Atlantic Salmon consists completely of talking points from environmentalists who oppose salmon farming. There appears to have been little or no research done into the actual state of Atlantic Salmon. Nowhere do they mention that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports, Atlantic salmon aquaculture in the United States meets high environmental and health standards and is involved in improving best practices for aquaculture worldwide.

Atlantic Flatfish

The gross oversimplification of the sustainability facts surrounding flounder, sole, and halibut, in warning against all Atlantic Flatfish, is not only absurd, its almost comical. In this case, the authors appear to have simply done no research at all. NOAA provides publicly available data on all of the fish in this category. Had they bothered to tap into that data base they would have found that in the case of flounder there are four stocks some of which are very healthy and are harvested at sustainable levels. Some are at 100, 200, and 300 percent above optimal populations. Others that have seen fishing pressures are expected to be fully rebuilt by 2013 or have had new measures put in place to help rebuild. Likewise, Sole has six stocks, only one of which is considered overfished. Heres how the other five are described: abundant and harvested at sustainable levels; population levels are high and no overfishing is occurring; abundant and harvested at sustainable levels; populations have recovered and are now extremely abundant; and very abundant. As far as halibut, the same database reveals that its populations are healthy. And their insistence that these fish contain heavy contamination is completely erroneous and unsourced.

Imported King Crab

Their musings about crab note nowhere that Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) laws require that stores label where the product has been imported from. Its actually easy for consumers to determine where the crab they are buying comes from regardless of the product name.

Imported Shrimp

With this section of the article, the sheer lack of knowledge and even elementary research about seafood applied to this article is on full display. Nowhere do the authors note that this countrys largest retailer and this countrys largest grocer both only source imported farmed shrimp that is certified by the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA.) And many, many other establishments have certification policies as well. Such certifications are in place to ensure the exclusion of the varied ills they write about so cavalierly. They go so far as to parrot a time honored activist distortion by noting that, less than 2 percent of all imported seafood gets inspected. They are either unaware or choose to obscure the fact that the Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) structure that oversees seafood is the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system, an operation that controls for hazards throughout the value chain and does not simply sit at the dock and wait to inspect food as it comes in. So fundamental is the distortion of how the FDA system works, it raises serious questions about how much if any independent research was done in preparing for this piece.

A new report, just released in September, by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is very clear that people who communicate about seafood need to explain not only the benefits of eating seafood but the public health problems associated with not eating seafood. Independent Harvard University research estimates that low seafood intake is responsible for somewhere in the neighborhood of 85,000 preventable deaths a year. Poorly written and researched articles like this one contribute to preventable deaths and public health problems by unnecessarily scaring people away from seafood.

We ask that in the interest of giving your readers access to accurate health and nutrition information, you give registered dietitian Jennifer McGuire MS, RD equal space to discuss the health effects of eating seafood.

Thank you for your attention to this important issue. I look forward to working with you.

Gavin Gibbons

National Fisheries Institute

The environmental group Sierra Club has long fought against pollution from power plants, but in its latest battle against coal, the group is using misguided rhetoric in an effort to link human exposurefrom power plant pollutants to tuna. In a newalarmist article to its supporters, Sierra club claims tuna-sandwich-eaters throughout the country are now being poisoned by coal plants, going so far as to note that one-seventieth of a teaspoon [of mercury] can pollute a 20-acre lake to the point where its fish are unsafe.

Question to Sierra Club and those who look to it for accurate information: when exactly was the last time you went fishing for tuna in a lake? In case Sierra Club has never been fishing, tuna are highly migratory, predator fish that only live in the ocean. The fish used in canned tuna are commercially fished and dont live in the lakes and rivers where power plant pollution is found.

Were all for a cleaner environment but were also for a little reality, not just rhetoric.

The mercury pollution from power plants that makes it into those lakes and streams actually poses a concern for recreational fishing and anglers, NOT commercial seafood, which is how the vast majority of Americans get their seafood, a distinction Sierra Club conveniently leaves out. Due to volcanic activity on the ocean floor, mercury has been naturally occurring in the ocean since the beginning of time, and despite Sierra Clubs claims that 70 percent of what were exposed to comes from human activities, the levels of mercury in commercial seafood are the same as they were nearly 100 years ago. Furthermore, no peer-reviewed published medical journal has ever reported on a case of mercury toxicity from the normal consumption of commercial seafood, and federal nutrition policy states that Americans should eat at least 8 oz. a week of a variety of seafood.

How exactly is scaring Americans into not eating tuna going to clean up coal? Tuna is a healthy, affordable protein that is high in omega-3s, nutrients that Americans need more of, and according to the USDAs latest Dietary Guidelines, the benefits of consuming seafood far outweigh the risks, even for pregnant women.

Creating false alarms and targeting tuna are not going to help Sierra Club win its fight against pollution, and referencing characters like Jeremy Piven, who used mercury poisoning as a convenient excuse to drop out of a Broadway play, will only marginalize Sierra Club. And leaning on clinicians like Dr. Jane Hightower wont help either. Her hypotheses are vastly out of step with the majority of scientists as proven by studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, Harvard University and the FDA that all conclude the immense benefits of eating seafood. Making tuna a culprit in a fight against polution is only hurting the public not coal.