The American National Fisheries Institute (NFI) says an environment group’s recent study about mercury levels in tuna and other seafood exceeding U.S. consumer safety guidelines is false.
“The Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) recently misled the public on the safety of commercial seafood. It presented itself as an organization that was qualified to advise the public on health matters and it presented its data as scientific fact,†says NFI.
“The statistics that were reported never stood up to the rigor of clinical peer-review and were never published in any journal. The data presented is the opinion of BRI, a wildlife organization, that readily admits is ‘responding to strong public interest and governmental negotiations of a mercury treaty by the United National Environment Program (UNEP).â€
BRI is made up of a team of scientists and their report was made in collaboration with the anti-toxins group IPEN. They concluded more than 82% of human hair samples from eight countries exceeded U.S. safe limits for mercury.
“Many environmental activist organizations try to conflate mercury pollution with scant traces of naturally-occurring mercury found in all ocean species of fish,†says NFI.
The U.S. government advises Americans to eat at least two fish meals a week, including tuna.
“Not eating the minimum recommended amount of seafood is the second-largest dietary contributor to preventable deaths in the United States (according to a peer-reviewed Harvard study) —costing 84,000 lives each year. Discouraging a fish-rich diet by manufacturing fear is the real harm,†says NFI.
