In my last entry about the obvious problems found in a recent Associated Press article I noted that I had actually been fairly pleased with the recent state of reporting on seafood. As an example I noted thatReuters had editorially mismanaged a story about Alaska pollock a few months ago but after some prodding, reviewed their own work and corrected the record.

After we challenged the Associated Press it too has now stepped up and taken responsibility for its recent mistakes. The AP published an article on January 27th about a court case surrounding proposed warning labels on tuna cans (the judge ruled against those who were calling for the labels.) In the AP’s reporting on the appeal of that case it made false assertions and simply didn’t get its fact right. I’ll let the AP speak for itself on this one:

• Correction: Tuna labeling story

The Associated Press

Posted:02/02/2009 01:31:47 PM PST

SAN FRANCISCO-In a Jan. 28 story about the legal battle over applying warning labels to tuna cans, The Associated Press reported erroneously that federal regulators warnexpectant mothers to avoid canned tuna because its high levels of mercury can cause brain damage. The Food and Drug Administration advises expectant mothers to limit weekly consumption to 6 ounces of albacore tuna or 12 ounces of “light” tuna, the health effects of which are still being scientifically debated. In addition, the story erroneously reported that Del Monte Foods Co. makes StarKist tuna. The company sold that brand in June to South Korea’s Dongwon Group.

Here’s the original letter NFI sent to the Associated Press insisting on a correction:

January 30, 2009

John Raess

San Francisco Bureau Chief

Associated Press

VIA Email

Dear Mr. Raess,

I am writing to draw your attention to a failure of journalistic standards as they relate to Paul Elias’ coverage of Tuesday’s state appellate court hearing on the Prop 65 case in which the State of California has argued canned tuna companies should be required to post mandated warning signs in connection with the sale of their product.

Elias claims that the FDA and EPA, “already advise women who are pregnant or may become pregnant, nursing mothers and young children to avoid eating the fish because of its high levels of mercury that can cause brain damage in babies.” This is simply a demonstrable falsehood. In the very first paragraph of the federal seafood consumption advice it is clearly stated, “women and young children in particular should include fish or shellfish in their diets due to the many nutritional benefits.” The advice then urges this sensitive subpopulation to avoid “shark, tilefish, swordfish, and king mackerel.” Tuna is not included on the list of 4 species to avoid. The advice clearly states that women and young children can eat 12 ounces of light tuna per week and can eat 6 ounces of albacore per week.

Not only is his declaration about federal advice on canned tuna false, his suggestion that levels of mercury in seafood can cause “brain damage” in children is at odds with the current weight of independent science. In fact, a new and extensive peer-reviewed study published by the FDA on January 21st suggests just the opposite-that mothers who fail to eat 12 ounces of omega-3 rich seafood a week during pregnancy disadvantage their babies. A minimum amount of research would have exposed his assertion as nutritionally and scientifically ignorant.

In paragraph 5 he writes, “The California Attorney General’s Office argued that state law requiring warning labels on products containing chemicals shown to cause cancer and birth defects means tuna should be labeled. The companies said the federal advisory is good enough.” This is misleading. The tuna companies argued and won, and continue to argue that the FDA advisory is not a Prop 65 “warning label” and should not be used as such. The FDA advisory is intended to educate pregnant women and other sensitive populations via health professionals not retail signage. It is the state that has back tracked from its original warning label argument and now suggests posting the FDA advisory would suffice. To misunderstand, misreport or distort this fact is a fundamental failure. For clarity; the state has reverted to an argument that the FDA advisory should be posted in connection with canned tuna, the tuna companies have stood firm in their opposition to such a move.

In the sixth paragraph Elias suggests the trial judge “threw out” the state’s original lawsuit. Clarity and accuracy dictate that the judge did not simply throw out that case, he ruled in favor of the tuna companies. As an editor and writer yourself you know the impact of certain phrases. To throw out a case suggests to readers that perhaps it wasn’t argued and or thoroughly deliberated but merely tossed aside. This case was argued to completion. The state lost its bid to force the placement of warning labels on tuna cans, period. The wording here serves to minimize that clear victory.

Further along in paragraph 11 Elias reports that Del Monte Corp is the “maker” of Starkist.” This is wrong. Starkist is owned by a South Korean company; Dongwon.

In the final paragraph he repeats his earlier false claim that “federal agencies advise pregnant women to avoid eating tuna.”

We ask that you remove this article from circulation and publish a correction of the numerous factual inaccuracies found herein.

Thank you for your consideration.

Gavin Gibbons

National Fisheries Institute

cc: Mark Rochester

Assistant Bureau Chief

Associated Press, San Francisco

Andy Schotz, Society of Professional

Journalists Ethics Committee Chair

I must first say I have beenpleased with the state of reporting on seafood lately. Not because I agree with it all but because when charged with reporting the facts, free of surreptitious agendas, the media has been doing a pretty god job lately.

Reuters botched a story about Alaska pollock a few months ago and reviewed their work and made things right, what more can you ask for? Hawthorne over at the Trib is another story… and one that’s quite frankly getting a little old. But by-in-large things haven’t been conspicuously offensive with respect to violation of the basic journalism tenets-and that’s a good thing.

On to the matter at hand; The Associated Press published an article on January 27th that missed the mark. I will save further color on this issue for later, if needed. Please read our letter to the AP below and watch this space to see if AP does the right thing.

January 30, 2009

John Raess

San Francisco Bureau Chief

Associated Press

VIA Email

Dear Mr. Raess,

I am writing to draw your attention to a failure of journalistic standards as they relate to Paul Elias’ coverage of Tuesday’s state appellate court hearing on the Prop 65 case in which the State of California has argued canned tuna companies should be required to post mandated warning signs in connection with the sale of their product.

Elias claims that the FDA and EPA, “already advise women who are pregnant or may become pregnant, nursing mothers and young children to avoid eating the fish because of its high levels of mercury that can cause brain damage in babies.” This is simply a demonstrable falsehood. In the very first paragraph of the federal seafood consumption advice it is clearly stated, “women and young children in particular should include fish or shellfish in their diets due to the many nutritional benefits.” The advice then urges this sensitive subpopulation to avoid “shark, tilefish, swordfish, and king mackerel.” Tuna is not included on the list of 4 species to avoid. The advice clearly states that women and young children can eat 12 ounces of light tuna per week and can eat 6 ounces of albacore per week.

Not only is his declaration about federal advice on canned tuna false, his suggestion that levels of mercury in seafood can cause “brain damage” in children is at odds with the current weight of independent science. In fact, a new and extensive peer-reviewed study published by the FDA on January 21st suggests just the opposite-that mothers who fail to eat 12 ounces of omega-3 rich seafood a week during pregnancy disadvantage their babies. A minimum amount of research would have exposed his assertion as nutritionally and scientifically ignorant.

In paragraph 5 he writes, “The California Attorney General’s Office argued that state law requiring warning labels on products containing chemicals shown to cause cancer and birth defects means tuna should be labeled. The companies said the federal advisory is good enough.” This is misleading. The tuna companies argued and won, and continue to argue that the FDA advisory is not a Prop 65 “warning label” and should not be used as such. The FDA advisory is intended to educate pregnant women and other sensitive populations via health professionals not retail signage. It is the state that has back tracked from its original warning label argument and now suggests posting the FDA advisory would suffice. To misunderstand, misreport or distort this fact is a fundamental failure. For clarity; the state has reverted to an argument that the FDA advisory should be posted in connection with canned tuna, the tuna companies have stood firm in their opposition to such a move.

In the sixth paragraph Elias suggests the trial judge “threw out” the state’s original lawsuit. Clarity and accuracy dictate that the judge did not simply throw out that case, he ruled in favor of the tuna companies. As an editor and writer yourself you know the impact of certain phrases. To throw out a case suggests to readers that perhaps it wasn’t argued and or thoroughly deliberated but merely tossed aside. This case was argued to completion. The state lost its bid to force the placement of warning labels on tuna cans, period. The wording here serves to minimize that clear victory.

Further along in paragraph 11 Elias reports that Del Monte Corp is the “maker” of Starkist.” This is wrong. Starkist is owned by a South Korean company; Dongwon.

In the final paragraph he repeats his earlier false claim that “federal agencies advise pregnant women to avoid eating tuna.”

We ask that you remove this article from circulation and publish a correction of the numerous factual inaccuracies found herein.

Thank you for your consideration.

Gavin Gibbons

National Fisheries Institute

cc: Mark Rochester

Assistant Bureau Chief

Associated Press, San Francisco

Andy Schotz, Society of Professional

Journalists Ethics Committee Chair

No the Ventura County Star isn’t the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal-but it still has standards… or should.

Take for instance its latest unsigned editorial. The 600+ word opinion piece takes an embarrassingly uneducated shot at canned tuna with the tact of a newly minted 16-year old environmental activist armed with a few quasi facts, a sandwich board and a bull horn.

What the Star seems to have forgotten is that just because it’s an opinion doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be backed up by the latest independent ground truth science. Opinion or not, the Star’s ranting stands in stark contacts to what researchers, doctors and dieticians have concluded after years of extensive review and research.

When writing about issues of public health, keeping up with the current state of peer reviewed science should be job 1, and in the case of the Star, only followed later by attempts at ingratiate ones self to agenda-driven environmental activists who have already lost once in court.

Aside from supporting a position that the lawyers for the state no longer support themselves, more on that little gaffe later, the Star distorts perspective and gets the facts wrong.

Singing from the environmental activist song sheet, in the second paragraph, the Star notes that albacore tuna has “nearly three times as much mercury as cheaper “light” tuna.” But what it doesn’t say is that the action level (that measures the amount of mercury) above which the FDA can remove seafood from sale is 1.0 part per million (ppm) and publically available federal statistics show the average mercury level in light tuna is .1 ppm, while the average mercury level in albacore tuna is .3 ppm. Nor do they mention that, despite the fact that mercury in light and albacore tuna are dramatically lower than the action level and pose no risk, the level also has a 1,000% safety buffer built in. In the words of the anonymous Star authors “these are all facts.”

Later the paper even claimsthat tuna is the “most-consumed fish in the U.S.” which it is not. I’ll let the budding Woodward and Bernstein’s at the Star figure out whichactually is the most often consumed fish in this country. Here’s a hint; when FDA scientists tested the mercury levels in it they found “ND” which means, “mercury concentration below detection level.”Time to get that crack research staff on it, I know those publicly available statistics can be difficult to dig up.

Apparently on page 2 of the Star’s environmental activist play book it discovers it’s supposed to find fault with a new FDA report about the safe and healthy nature of seafood in the American diet (a report I am sure they read in itsentirety.) But it doesn’t mention that the report was a peer reviewed study. So, among others, the Star is finding fault with the University of Washington, Harvard University School of Public Health and Children’s Hospital and Research Center at Oakland Department of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

And finally, the Star must not have had a reporter in the courtroom this week because it holds fast to its support for the State attorney’s argument that “warning labels” should be required on canned tuna. Oddly enough the State essentially abandoned that argument during the appeal and went with a fall back position that perhaps just posting the federal seafood consumption advice would suffice.

Well, even if the State isn’t fighting that fight the Star still is.

It wasn’t two weeks ago that I was scolding the Economist for a seafood sustainability story that relied on erroneous environmental activist data (not my opinion, mind you, just a fact.) But this week we (and by we I mean Stetson Tinkham, NFI’s director of International Affairs and I – avid Economist readers) find the Economist squaring off against activists who have once again gone too far.

Back in October PETA launched yet another sensational campaign that, as usual, goes beyond the pale– this time targeting children and suggesting a rhetorical correlation between seafood and eating kittens.

It would appear that the Economist did its homework this time in reporting that, “the case for promoting fish to children is clear; this campaign is wrong.”

But before I gush too much I must say it isn’t particularly hard to point out the flaws associated with a group targeting unsuspecting children that brought us an animal rights campaign called “Holocaust on Your Plate,” seeking to compare the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis during World War II to eating beef and chicken.

PETA’s self marginalization continues unabated.

Let me start by saying, while I am sure he wishes it did, Michael Hawthorne’s latest article on mercury has nothing to do with fish… or seafood… or even water for that matter. It has to do with corn and a study that apparently says researchers detected traces of mercury in samples of high-fructose corn syrup.

Admittedly, I know nothing about high-fructose corn syrup but I do know a little something about Hawthorne’s work and his history on the mercury issue. I know that the study he’s writing about only analyzed 20 samples. I know that Hawthorne himself tested 54 samples when he was in search of mercury in canned tuna – oh and in case you don’t remember, all of those samples came up safe.

So, for some perspective — Hawthorne is writing about his next great mercury menace based on a sample size that doesn’t even match up to the one he gathered in his scientific laboratory cubical at the Chicago Tribune. What’s more, the samples themselves were taken 4 years ago and the corn folks report that their industry has used “mercury-free versions” of the agents in question for years now-a fact he dismisses by oddly sighting the same report that the corn refiners rather succinctly explained was out of date.

It would appear that Hawthorne’s Pavlovian reaction to hearing that a study about mercury had been published is to immediately link it to fish no matter how absurd the thread. True to form, in the 10th paragraph Hawthorne notes;

• There is no established safe dose for elemental mercury, the type discovered in corn syrup. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says an average-sized woman should limit her exposure to 5.5 micrograms a day of methyl mercury, the kind found in fish.

He then goes on to write;

• If that same woman regularly ate corn syrup contaminated at the highest level detected in the study-0.57 micrograms per gram-the researchers estimated that she could end up consuming an amount of mercury that is five times higher than the EPA’s safe dose.

Hawthorne starts off by admitting that there is no parallel or comparison between the two and that in fact they are biochemically different materials… and then goes right ahead and makes a parallel, complete with a comparison. I had a PhD tell me today that that kind of leap is literally like comparing apples to oranges.

I am sure Hawthorne, Hightower and Mahaffey (the usual cast of characters) will team up for many more high-fructose corn syrup scare stories in the coming days and perhaps in one of those tomes he can correct himself (let’s not hold our breath on that one.)

Look, let me be blunt for a minute if I can- as I mentioned I don’t know high-fructose from low-fructose from fructose-free… I don’t really even know what fructose is. The type of mercury we’re talking about is elemental mercury not methyl mercury the kind associated with seafood, so we don’t have a proverbial dog in this fight. But what we do have is an interested in seeing that writers like Hawthorne who proselytize on pet issues rather than report are exposed.

A day after the FDA released an exhaustive, peer-reviewed, draft report analyzing the state of seafood science over the past 5 years that demonstrates just how much the benefits of eating seafood outweigh any concerns about trace amounts of mercury, you might wonder why I am blogging about Jeremy Piven. There is a tie-in, trust me.

NFI’s YouTube rebuttal of Piven’s Good Moring American interview is getting quite a lot of attention. In fact the celebrity blogosphere is percolating with our fact-based assessment of Piven’s tale, complete with headlines like The Human Thermometer is Trying to Salvage His Reputation.

Our review of his interview with Dianne Sawyer came before the previously mentioned FDA report was posted, so we didn’t have the opportunity to include this little nugget- and this is where it gets worse for Piv– the FDA report states, in describing Table IIIA, that overt harm from mercury is seen at levels more than 100 times the average level in the U.S.

Now, let’s think back to the Good Moring America interview (insert blurry oscillating lines here accompanied by flute & timpani riff) when Piven suggested the overt harm he received came from 6 times the average level and what’s more he suggested doctors were stunned by his levels and had to test 3 times befor they believed how high they were. Why this wonderful story just gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn’t it?

Piven seems like the literary type. So, for him a subtle reminder from Sir Walter Scott, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

Actor Jeremy Piven is in full damage control mode. Ever since his wacky mercury poisoning “diagnosis” and subsequent flight from Broadway he’s been laying low-recuperating… except when there are award shows and parties to attend.

Well, he’s going to party with Dianne Sawyer on Good Morning American on Thursday. Let’s see if the GMA crowd does its homework and asks the newly minted dietary expert about the weight of 5 years worth of researchthat clearly shows the benefits of seafood far outweigh any potential concerns associated with the trace amount of mercury found in seafood.

I can’t wait to see if GMA gets snowed by Piven or asks real pointed science-based questions that expose his latest acting job for what it is— a fraud.

Perhaps The Economist isn’t a paper you read regularly… at the risk of having a Sara Palin / Katie Couric moment I’ll admit I’ve let my Economist subscription laps. Thankfully Stetson Tinkham, our director of international affairs, has not (please note he reads many papers and is not the Governor of a state, nor is he running for vice president.) But its recent article on seafood sustainability highlights some important points worth raising.

For starters when you deal in facts it’s important to get em all right. The Economist, despite its high standards, dose not get all the facts right. In this article it bases its warning that fish-and-chip shops and McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish are poised for problems on the apparent fact that the Alaska pollock stock “on the brink of collapse.” This is completely false. Activist rhetoric attempted to claim that the pollock stock was on the verge of collapse but independent ground truth science revealed that claim to be laughable. The scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) say, “Alaska pollock population levels are high, and no overfishing is occurring.” This isn’t research that requires the help of the library of congress to find. The Economist could have just Googled it or perhaps read the write-up on Reuters or even just asked the scientists who did the assessment themselves– now there’s an idea.

Regardless of the sloppiness with which the research was done for this particular report there is a big picture sustainability fact that journalists are either ignoring or simply don’t realize. When it comes to seafood consumption in the U.S., Americans are already eating sustainably whether they are trying to or not. It’s a fact. Let’s get a little perspective on the issue– the top ten most commonly eaten fish in the U.S. make up 90% of all of the fish eaten in the U.S. And those top ten fish are sustainably managed and have sustainability oversight in place.

So, while environmental activist yell from the rafters that the plight of the Bluefin tuna is a scourge on our collective conscience, plate and palate keep this in mind; Americans eat about the weight of a paperclip in Bluefin tuna per capita each year, choosing to focus almost solely on species like shrimp, pollock and tilapia. Are there stocks worldwide with sorry sustainability stories and consumers who throw caution to the wind with their consumption habits? Yes. But by in large they’re not Americans. We’re doing a good job when it comes to eating sustainably and our fisheries are some of the best managed in the world.

Let’s make a resolution, shall we, members of the media? In 2009 put sustainability in its proper perspective and give credit where it’s do.

Here at NFI, you could forgive us if we get a little wary whenever the New York Times takes up the issue of fish consumption and mercury. As you can see from the “>we tangled with the paper pretty extensively a little less than a year ago when they picked up on a piece of activist fear mongering about mercury and tuna sushi — a dispute that made it all the way to the Public Editor at the newspaper. But when we picked up the newspaper this morning to read the editorial, “