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.