Here at NFI, you could forgive us if we get a little wary whenever the New York Times takes up the issue of fish consumption and mercury. As you can see from the NFI on the Record section of our Web site, we tangled with the paper pretty extensively a little less than a year ago when they picked up on a piece of activist fear mongering about mercury and tuna sushi -- a dispute that made it all the way to the Public Editor at the newspaper. But when we picked up the newspaper this morning to read the editorial, "So Is Fish Safe to Eat or Not?", concerning the dispute between FDA and EPA on federal advice to pregnant women about fish consumption, it was hard not to conclude that while the Times still doesn't completely understand the complexities of the issue, at least they're moving somewhat in the right direction. First, we should take a look what the newspaper got wrong -- and that starts with the headline. The issue in question, the FDA/EPA advice about fish consumption for pregnant women, was never about whether or not fish was safe to eat -- seafood clearly is safe to eat. What this dispute is about is what the dietary guidelines for one specific subset of the American population ought to be. But when the newspaper frames the question as whether or not fish is safe to eat, it simply adopts the line of the environmental lobbyists who have interjected themselves into this debate and would like to see fish consumption eliminated entirely from the American diet. Their concerns have been and clearly continue to be environmental health and not public health. Now let's take a look at one specific passage where the newspaper doesn't transmit the whole story:
"The current official advice from the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency is that pregnant and nursing women and young children can safely eat up to 12 ounces — roughly two servings — of most fish a week, but should limit their intake of albacore tuna to 6 ounces a week and avoid entirely four species of fish containing high levels of mercury."
By couching the advisory in this manner, the paper once again borrows the activist line. The fact of the matter remains that the four fish FDA believes pregnant women should avoid -- shark, swordfish, tile fish and king mackerel -- account for less than one percent of all seafood consumed in the U.S. every year. But by obscuring the fact that very few people actually eat those fish, activists have managed to scare consumers away from eating seafood at all. Women in the U.S. eat less than two ounces of seafood per week, which means they are denying themselves an important source of Omega 3 fatty acids that are known to encourage cognitive development in fetuses and help protect against heart disease. Which leads us to the part of the editorial where the newspaper gets it right:
"Although the draft strikes some as another last-minute effort by the Bush administration to weaken industry oversight, it can provide a useful opportunity to review whether mercury warnings have gone too far in driving women away from a potentially beneficial food source. The report is still undergoing revision at the F.D.A., which pledges to publish it for comment before deciding how to proceed. Only then will a wide array of experts be able to tell if the final recommendations make sense or are dangerously flawed."
In the end, that's all NFI is asking for -- an honest assessment of the latest science on the nutritional benefits of fish during pregnancy. Here's hoping we get it.
