oceana

Oceana, long a Greenpeace wannabe, with lesser credentials and even lesser reach is trying to pull its own Alaska pollock type rhetorical attack on Pacific whiting.

I have written it so many times I must sound like a broken record. When explaining the way Oceana prefers to communicate I say it, "continues to operate in that gray area between skillfully under informing and blatantly misinforming." And apparently that goes for its celebrity spokesperson, Ted Danson, too.

Our friends tell us a lot about who we are. Here's an example, Jackie Savitz over at Oceana is now on Twitter. She's a well known environmental activist who doesn't obscure the causes she supports or the campaigns she runs. She and I don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues but such is life. I know basically where she stands on certain things and generally we disagree-- nothing wrong with that.

Wheedling distortion and stale, stifled, outdated scientific thinking like a weapon Michael Bender, the one-man-band who makes up the Mercury Policy Project (MMP), appears to have set his sights on hijacking the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) latest work on mercury and seafood.

Being interested in seafood sustainability and applying that interest to your work responsibly are two different things. Environmental lobbying organization Oceana is interested in seafood sustainability but does not go about promoting or executing that interest in a responsible way.

The environmental lobbying group Oceana has unfortunately turned to misinformation in an attempt to distract from the fact that responsible food communicators and registered dietitians have produced a well-researched piece of nutrition communication on pregnancy and seafood. Oceana's efforts are designed to decrease fish consumption and not improve public health. The science-based pregnancy and seafood flyer is an effort to get the latest ground truth science, including FDA advice as well as conclusions from more recently published independent studies, into the hands of targeted consumers.

According to the Today Show and Health Magazine Publix grocery stores are among the top ten healthiest in the country.

When we deliver the real facts about mercury in fish, backed up by the latest science, it appears groups like Oceana don't like it too much. Case in point; back on September 17th the Fort Myers News Press published an opinion column submitted by NFI.

This week the environmental lobbying group Oceana turned its attention towards Wal Mart as it campaigns for retailers to post mercury warning signs. But what Wal Mart and consumers should know is that this campaign is more about misinformation than it is about mercury.

   It's not quite the 2004 forged document scandal that ended Dan Rather's storied career at CBS but it does highlight an important issue about sourcing that many in the media overlook.