Its been two weeks since the FDA came out with its new draft guidance for pregnant women on eating seafood and theres been a flood of reporting about it:

• Wall Street Journal FDA to Increase Calls for More Fish Consumption
• TimeFDA: Pregnant Women Should Eat More Fish
• New York Times Pregnant Women Advised to Eat More Fish
• Health Day Pregnant or breast-feeding women urged to eat more fish

The new draft advice that has been reported on is clear about one thing; the need for pregnant women to eat more fish. The reports scientific assessment is nearly 300 pages long and relies on a review of 110 independent, published, peer-revived studies. It is an impressive tome that took nearly a decade to complete.

Enter the Environmental Working Group and the Mercury Policy Project. It took this dynamic duo 15 days to decide they didnt like the draft advice and were going to pout about it in such a way to make themselves appear even more outside the mainstream, science-based conversation than they usually are. In the face of 10 years worth of review and 110 studies, EWG & MPP announce that the Food & Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency are wrong based on information EWG & MPP mined from a dozen cherry picked studies dating back to 2004.

Lets put their latest scientifically feeble salvo in perspective, shall we?

In 2010 the USDA & U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reviewed about 40 studies and determined the benefits of seafood outweighed mercury issues.

In 2011 the World Health Organization reviewed about 150 studies and essentially came to the same conclusion.

Now the FDA & EPA have reviewed 110 studies and, no surprise, the message is fundamentally the same.

Regardless of this mountain of evidence from independent researchers and reviewers EWG & MPP continue to complain because the facts, the scientific facts, dont match their agenda driven narrative. Even when public health experts say scaring pregnant women away from seafood hurts them, they persist. Keep in mind their point person on this issue Ned Groth, the poor misguided Jenny McCarthy of this issue, is the same individual who admitted to a reporter that he made policy recommendations based not on actual exposure risk but on stuff he heard about a friends grandson in New Jersey.

EWG & MPP and not reliable sources of information on this topic, they are fringe activists who find themselves further and further outside the tent because they are unwilling to accept facts that contradict their fantasy.

Reporters are urged to use only genuine, independent, science-based resources for stories about seafood and mercury.