FDA to check tuna - U.S. to investigate mercury levels in canned fish

[Guest guest]

Too bad an honest organization isn't going to do the tests.

* * * *

FDA to check tuna

U.S. to investigate mercury levels in canned fish

By Sam Roe

Tribune staff reporter

December 31, 2005

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0512310211dec31,1,2450043.sto\

ry

The Food and Drug Administration will investigate whether tens of

millions of cans of tuna sold each year contain potentially hazardous

levels of mercury.

Responding to a Tribune series this month on mercury in fish, the FDA

said it will review the possibility that there are elevated mercury

levels in some cans of " light tuna, " one of America's best-selling

seafoods and a product the agency has recommended repeatedly as a

low-mercury choice.

The Tribune revealed that the U.S. tuna industry is using a potentially

high-mercury tuna species, yellowfin, to make about 15 percent of the

1.2 billion cans of light tuna sold annually. Most of these cans are not

labeled yellowfin, making it impossible for consumers to know which cans

might be high in mercury.

In an interview, Acheson, the FDA's chief medical officer, said

the agency had been unaware that some canned light tuna was made with a

species that often is high in mercury.

" We will definitely look at it through our office of seafood and

determine whether there is something that requires further pursuit, "

Acheson said. He could not say exactly what the investigation would

entail or whether the agency would conduct additional testing of canned

tuna.

The chief lobbying group for the leading tuna producers--StarKist,

Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea--said the industry would cooperate

with the FDA inquiry. The executive director of the U.S. Tuna

Foundation, Burney, said canned light tuna was not a health risk

and that its mercury levels were well below government limits. " It's a

non-issue, " Burney said.

But top consumer and environmental groups called on the tuna industry to

stop using yellowfin in canned light tuna.

" It's unforgivable, " said Greer, a toxicologist at the Natural

Resources Defense Council, a leading conservation group. She said it was

ironic that " efforts to recommend canned light tuna to people is

undermined by industry shoving contaminated fish into the wrong cans. "

Almost all of the mercury that people are exposed to comes from eating

fish tainted with the toxic metal. Because mercury can harm the

developing central nervous system, young children and fetuses are most

at risk.

Children exposed to dangerous levels of mercury can suffer subtle

learning difficulties, including delays in walking and talking. Adults

can experience headaches, fatigue, loss of concentration and numbness in

the hands and feet.

While the mercury content in canned yellowfin tuna varies, the industry

said the average is about three times higher than that of regular canned

light, which generally is made with skipjack, a smaller tuna species

with lower mercury levels.

Canned yellowfin, the industry said, has about as much mercury as canned

albacore, a product the federal government has warned at-risk groups

about because of high amounts of the toxic metal. In 2004, the FDA and

the Environmental Protection Agency jointly warned young children,

pregnant women and women of childbearing age to not eat more than 6

ounces of canned albacore per week.

But no warning exists for canned yellowfin.

The FDA-EPA warning also states that canned light tuna is low in mercury

and therefore a wise choice for at-risk groups.

Canned light tuna does have relatively low amounts of mercury on

average, but the levels can vary widely. Stiker, a former Bumble

Bee executive, said the use of yellowfin in canned light might result in

some cans testing high. A can of light tuna with low levels of mercury

might consist of skipjack, Stiker explained, while a can testing high

might be solely yellowfin.

`Just plain wrong'

Bender, head of the Mercury Policy Project, a non-profit

advocacy group based in Vermont, said the tuna industry's practice of

putting yellowfin into canned light without appropriate labels is " just

plain wrong. "

" If the public doesn't know what species they are eating, they have no

way to tell if the product has low, medium or high amounts of mercury, "

he said.

Caroline DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science

in the Public Interest, said the revelation that yellowfin is in light

tuna makes the federal government's mercury warning " even less protective. "

The Tribune series reported that about 180 million cans of light tuna

are made with yellowfin each year. Half of those cans are marketed as a

gourmet product. StarKist calls its product " Gourmet's Choice, " Chicken

of the Sea markets a " Tonno " product under the Genova label and Bumble

Bee offers a " Tonno in olive oil " variety. Of those, only Genova

identifies its product as yellowfin.

As part of its series, the Tribune bought 18 cans of gourmet tuna from

area stores and tested them for mercury. The results showed low levels

of the toxic metal: 0.06 parts of mercury per million parts of fish

tissue, far lower than the 0.35 parts per million average reported by

the tuna industry.

Stiker said he was surprised by the results and speculated that Chicago

had received shipments of gourmet cans made with small, young yellowfin

that would be low in mercury because the toxic metal accumulates up the

food chain.

Industry fights warnings

In recent years the tuna industry, fearing class-action lawsuits and a

drop in sales, has opposed government efforts to warn consumers about

mercury in tuna, federal records show. The industry is especially

concerned about warnings regarding canned light tuna, which accounts for

65 percent of all cans of tuna sold. Albacore makes up 35 percent.

Since the Tribune series was published, the Tuna Foundation has defended

the use of yellowfin in light tuna.

In an interview, Burney, the foundation director, said gourmet canned

tuna is not light tuna but rather " a completely different product. "

But gourmet cans prominently say " light tuna " on the labels.

Burney responded to that discrepancy by saying the gourmet canned

product " is set off by itself in the stores if you go and get it. It's

not set with the cans of light-meat tuna. "

But when the Tribune bought gourmet tuna at 18 groceries for its mercury

testing, each store sold the gourmet cans alongside the other cans of

tuna, which often have similar labels.

The biggest difference is often price: The gourmet version can sell for

$1 more.

Burney said consumers who buy light tuna to avoid mercury exposure will

not purchase the gourmet cans.

" I think price alone would stop you from getting it, " he said, " and I

think that it is only sold to people that know what they are getting. "

The Tribune also reported that some yellowfin not used in gourmet cans

is packaged and sold as regular canned light. Stiker told the Tribune

that the industry often catches more yellowfin than it can sell in its

gourmet line. So the remainder is sold as regular light tuna without any

special labels.

Until recently, Stiker had been Bumble Bee's executive vice president of

corporate development and a leading industry spokesman. He left the

company Dec. 9, two days before the Tribune published its mercury

series. Stiker and Bumble Bee said he was leaving on good terms to head

a small coffee company.

Spokesman contradicted

When the Tribune first contacted the Tuna Foundation in July for comment

regarding the mercury issue, the lobbying group referred the newspaper

to Stiker. But the Tuna Foundation now says it disagrees with a

statement Stiker made repeatedly in interviews with the newspaper: that

it is an industrywide practice to put yellowfin that cannot be sold as a

gourmet product into regular canned light.

StarKist and Chicken of the Sea referred questions to the Tuna

Foundation. Burney said that while he did not know for sure how Bumble

Bee handled yellowfin, StarKist and Chicken of the Sea did not add any

fish to regular canned light that would raise the average mercury levels.

He said that when those two companies catch tuna, they separate the

large yellowfin from the small ones on the boats. The large yellowfin,

which can be higher in mercury, are sent to canneries to be packed as a

gourmet product. The small yellowfin, he said, are mixed with skipjack

of comparable size and mercury levels, in order to make regular canned

light.

Stiker declined to comment on the Tuna Foundation questioning his

statements. " I'm done on this topic, " he wrote in an e-mail.

----------

sroe@...

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

The material in this post is distributed without profit to those who have

expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for

research and educational purposes. For more information go to:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

http://oregon.uoregon.edu/~csundt/documents.htm

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this email for purposes

that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright

owner.