Straight talk and manipulative mumbo jumbo-separate stories of government candor and corporate cowardice:
Have you seen those ads from the canned tuna industry touting StarKist and Bumble Bee as “a safe & healthy food for everyone� Two beautiful girls look cozy and healthy, nestled in Mom's lap. Everyone smiles, perhaps with the satisfaction of folks who've just enjoyed a hearty meal of mercury-sodden
fish.
â€Mercuryâ€, the U.S. Tuna Foundation's Web site informs us, “is a basic element of the earth that occurs naturally in air and water.†After reading the industry's ads, I need a mercury and mayo on rye toast. I love it when businesses panic and go into crisis management mode. That's what the tuna folks did when the federal government started making noise about warning women of childbearing age to go easy on the tuna because it contains too much mercury.
As soon as the bad news hits, businesses spend gobs of money on PR prose like this, from the Tuna Foundation: “It is true that albacore tuna contains somewhat more mercury than light tuna. But the amount is still very low and well below government standards.†Yum-yum, we want more. I'm a big tuna fan, and I try to ignore hysterical health warnings from scientists whose primary objective is to score headlines. But I'd be far more assured if Chicken of the Sea gave it to us straight. I'd head out and buy a case of canned tuna if I saw an ad like this: “Of course there's mercury in tuna. There's hormones in meat, bacteria in produce, lead in the water. And your cell phone is frying your brain. That's the world we've made for ourselves. Nobody's happy about it, and we ought to fix it. But you're not going to die from eating tuna, and if you listened to every wild health warning put out by the guys in the white coats, you'd die of anxiety. Lighten up-have a tuna on toast.â€
Source: Washington Post