Here’s an Op Ed that ran today in the Washington Times by NFI Vice President Mary Anne Hansan:
HANSAN: Enviros to babies: We hope you’re born dumb
Eco-falsehoods about mercury in fish expose activists who put politics before health
In case you came across this AARP blog posting today “Just How Healthy is Seafood?” You should know we did too. And we felt it was a touch light on… well… facts and science. So, NFI’s registered dietitian reached out with the letter you can read below.
Consumers have been hammered over the last few weeks with a slew of common and calculated pieces of misinformation about mercury in seafood. Not as part of a public education campaign gone awry or faulty reporting, but as part of a targeted lobbying campaign that has nothing to do with fish and that you won’t hear hide nor hair of next week.
Yesterday the Sierra Club posted about mercury on the Huffington Post and unfortunately they chose to make erroneous assertions about seafood throughout the column, rhetoric Huffington Post editors should have flagged, researched and edited themselves. But they failed to. So today we’re making sure they’re aware of the transgressions.
December 6, 2011
Nico Pitney
Managing Editor
Huffington Post
VIA Email
Dear Mr. Pitney,
A recent Associated Press article out of Milwaukee got me thinking about last year’s holiday season and how the misguided activist group GotMercury? decided it would be a good idea to ask charitable organizations not to distribute donations of canned tuna to needy families.Yes, as ridiculous as it sounds they did. Thankfully, food banks coast to coast ignored the sea turtle
When the Authors of the popular book Eat This Not That decided to take on fish this week apparently they also decided to abandon the idea that authors should a.) do research and b.) that said research should be accurate. In the following letter we ask their editors to… well… not to put too fine a point on it but… do their job.
November 17, 2011
The environmental group Sierra Club has long fought against pollution from power plants, but in its latest battle against coal, the group is using misguided rhetoric in an effort to link human exposure from power plant pollutants to tuna. In a new alarmist article to its supporters, Sierra club claims tuna-sandwich-eaters throughout the country are now being poisoned by coal plants, going so far as to note that “one-seventieth of a teaspoon [of mercury] can pollute a 20-acre lake to the point where its fish are unsafe.”
No one likes being duped. But that’s how it feels to read the posts on the blog, Mom’s Clean Air Force. The site appears to be a place where mothers share their experiences more or less spontaneously. One such item caught our attention today because its headline was so alarming, “My Toddler’s Mercury Poisoning From Tuna.”
It’s no secret that these days that news organizations, especially on line operations, are hungry for content and inexpensive ways to develop it. MSNBC.com appears to be harnessing the power of the ever under-paid and often under-prepared student journalist to bulk up its offerings.
September 21, 2011
John Geddes
Managing Editor
New York Times
VIA Email
Dear Mr. Geddes,
