There were a load of fishy stories this year--
The master manipulators at Greenpeace have been unfurling banners and vandalizing property for years in the name of raising their profile in the media and raising funds from their supporters.
This morning the CBS Early Show did a short segment with Dr. Jennifer Ashton that mentioned seafood and eating fish while pregnant. While Ashton came pretty close to getting the FDA advice on seafood consumption basically right, she did something that Doctors often do-- lump "tuna" in with higher mercury fish like Shark and Tile Fish. She said:
Over the past few days, we've been seeing sporadic reports about a study that was published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that measured the amount of mercury found in the bodies of most Americans.
Just a quick note for you all this morning. For starters if you are not familiar with Arthur Allen let's make one thing clear right off the bat-he is no hack. He has a track record of being fair and getting both sides and siding with ground truth science in his journalistic deliberations.
Let's start from the beginning. Vietnam represents an important market for U.S. soybeans. U.S. soybean and soybean meal exports to Vietnam totaled nearly $100 million in 2008 and are on the rise. U.S. exports of soybean meal climbed from just 17,469 metric tons in 2004 to almost 115,000 metric tons in 2008, a 558% increase.
Let's start from the beginning. Vietnam represents an important market for U.S. soybeans. U.S. soybean and soybean meal exports to Vietnam totaled nearly $100 million in 2008 and are on the rise. U.S. exports of soybean meal climbed from just 17,469 metric tons in 2004 to almost 115,000 metric tons in 2008, a 558% increase.
In case you didn't know anti-competition lobbyists representing American catfish farmers are working hard to have a Vietnamese fish called pangasius banned from this country and that spells trouble for Montana cattlemen. Despite the fact that pangasius has been safely imported for years and has caused a grand total of zero illnesses, the bottom-feeding special interest lobby has cooked up a food safety scare story and is shopping it to USDA and anyone in Washington who will listen.
On Thursday CNN ran a story about imported shrimp from Thailand that was really just a rehash of an old AFL-CIO report about suspected labor abuses. There was nothing new about the report or about the package CNN produced so the first question is, where is the new in this news?
At the same time the Obama Administration is working to curb the influence of narrow special interests, American catfish producers are busy telling fish tales to Congress to get their competition regulated out of existence. They've dreamt up a faux food safety scare and they're shopping it to any reporter or regulator who will listen. It's a piece of fiction that's fat with anecdotal exaggerations and thin on facts. But this isn't the first time the anti-competition catfish lobby has stooped to these types of tactics.
