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.
It hasn't been two hours since we told you about the Mercury Policy Project's (MPP) proposed letter to the FDA and already the group is shopping around a significantly toned down version of its rhetoric filled rant. The new version includes abandoning its original ask that the FDA revise the government's Action Level for mercury in fish, to adopt the two-tiered system used in other countries and adds a middle initial to the primary author's name.
Wheedling distortion and stale, stifled, outdated scientific thinking like a weapon Michael Bender, the one-man-band who makes up the Mercury Policy Project (MMP), appears to have set his sights on hijacking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.
Do you remember as a kid looking at the picture of a toy on the box and then opening it and finding it didn't quite match the sell job created by the artist's conception? I distinctly remember being a youngster and finding the difference between a remote controlled car and a radio controlled car meant one has a cord attached to the controller and the other didn't. I wasn't quite sold a bill of goods but the sales job didn't quite match reality. These days I find that headlines often over sell the product and under deliver on content.
Since February of '08 we've been warning U.S. grocery stores about the perils of engaging with Greenpeace (aka the 500 pound 5 year-old) on issues of sustainability. American stores have their own seafood sustainability plans and partners in place-they, quite frankly, don't need an eco-bully to dictate how they handle their sourcing.
The good thing is Environmental Defense never lets facts get in the way of a good blog posting... or in this case an erroneous, misleading one.
Today's sustainablog is riddled with errors including this one; "barely one-quarter of U.S. fisheries are known to be sustainably fished."
Reports are percolating today about an EPA study that found fish caught near wastewater treatment plants had residues of pharmaceuticals in them, including medicines used to treat high cholesterol, allergies, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder and depression.
You may have come across this recent article on something called Examiner.com, it's a series of websites where people who "consider [themselves] an insider with insights and knowledge to share" write articles for the site with minimal editorial oversight. That's how this 450 word advertisement for Safe Harbor Seafood made its way to the web.
It is often claimed that Albert Einstein said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." It's also claimed he said "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." It would appear Greenepeace's persistent illusion of progress has become its own artificial reality.
A Newsweek blogger has taken exception with my math on a recent challenge we issued to KPIX TV. And you know what? She was right. I botched my conversion of micrograms per deciliter vs. micrograms per liter, a mistake that I readily admit and have corrected wherever it could be found earlier.
