The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have announced joint efforts to secure the safety of Gulf of Mexico seafood in the wake of the April 20, 2010, oil spill. “It is important to coordinate seafood surveillance efforts on the water, at the docks and at seafood processors to ensure seafood in the market is safe to eat,” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said in a joint press release. The agencies plan a “multi-pronged approach” that includes precautionary closures of fishing areas, increased seafood testing inspections and a “re-opening protocol” for affected Gulf waters. NOAA has apparently created a “seafood sampling and inspection plan” and is using “ongoing surveillance to evaluate new seafood samples to determine whether contamination is present” outside closed fishing areas. If the samples have elevated levels of oil compounds, NOAA said it will consider expanding the closed areas. FDA, which…
Tag Archives fish/seafood
U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke (D) has reportedly declared a fishery disaster in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill’s effect on commercial and recreational fisheries in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Made in response to requests from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R), the determination will help ensure that the federal government “is in a position to mobilize the full range of assistance that fishermen and fishing communities may need,” Locke said. The Commerce Department has asked for $15 million in supplemental funding “as a backstop to address this disaster,” $5 million in economic development assistance through the Economic Development Administration and unemployment coverage. In addition, the Small Business Administration has offered economic injury disaster loans to help fishermen and other affected businesses. See U.S. Commerce Department Press Release, May 24, 2010.
The United Nations (U.N.) has reportedly balked at a proposal to ban the international trade of Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna, an endangered species prized by sushi aficionados. Gathered in Doha, Qatar, for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), U.N. member states voted 20-68 to reject the measure, which was supported by environmentalists but opposed by the Japanese and Canadian governments. The latter had apparently argued that regulation of the bluefin trade should fall under the jurisdiction of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (Iccat). In addition, the European nations with bluefin fishing fleets for the most part abstained from voting. Meanwhile, the United Nations and other environmental regulators have expressed disappointment with the result and questioned Iccat’s ability to effectively manage the vulnerable fisheries. EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik and Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Maria Damanaki…
The European Commission (EC) has proposed that the European Union prohibit international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna, favored by sushi eaters in Japan and elsewhere. According to the announcement, member states will discuss the proposal to reach a common EU position before the March 2010 meeting in Doha of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. While the EC is apparently concerned about the species’ “poor conservation status,” the trade ban would not take effect until 2011. According to a news source, environmental groups criticized the announcement, warning that a delay could encourage more fishing in the interim. See Financial Times, February 22, 2010.
This op-ed article examines the environmental sustainability of fish oil as more and more consumers are reportedly choosing supplements “as a guilt-free way of getting their omega-3 fatty acids.” According to author Paul Greenberg, most fish oil “comes from a creature upon which the entire Atlantic coastal ecosystem relies, a bigheaded, smelly, foot-long member of the herring family called menhaden,” which one historian has apparently likened to the passenger pigeon in terms of rapid population decline. Once harvested for fertilizer and lamp oil, “trillions of menhaden were ground into feed for hogs, chicken and pets” after the advent of petroleum-based lamps. “Today,” writes Greenberg, “hundreds of billions of pounds of them are converted into lipstick, salmon feed, paint,‘buttery spread,’ salad dressing and, yes, some of those omega-3 supplements you have been forcing on your children.” He argues that menhaden “keep the water clean,” claiming that the “muddy brown color of the…
According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a food importer from Virginia, who was sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring to import falsely labeled catfish from Vietnam to avoid paying import tariffs, has been barred from importing food into the United States for the next 20 years. This action apparently marks the first time the agency used its debarment authority under a law allowing the FDA to “debar a person from importing an article of food or offering such an article for import into the United States if that person has been convicted of a felony for conduct relating to the importation into the United States of any food.” The law also allows debarment in instances of the importation of adulterated food posing “a threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.” FDA reported that Peter Xuong Lam, president of Virginia Star Seafood…
Describing the world’s tuna trade as “an awesome 21st century hunt,” Mahr’s article explores how “for some species of tuna, the chase is becoming unsustainable.” In 1950, she reports, about 600,000 tons of tuna were caught worldwide while in 2008, that number hit nearly 6 million tons. Particularly worrisome are the dwindling numbers of Atlantic bluefin tuna, which the World Wildlife Fund estimates could disappear in the Mediterranean as early as 2012, Mahr writes. She quotes a spokesperson for the Center for the Future of the Oceans at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California as saying that Atlantic bluefin tuna has become “the poster child of overfishing worldwide” and that “the hunt is relentless. These are the wolves, grizzly bears, lions and tigers of the ocean. If you take the top predators out, the ecosystem begins to get out of balance.
Some 40,000 Atlantic salmon have reportedly escaped a fish farm into Pacific Ocean waters off the coast of British Columbia. They apparently slipped through a hole in the net while farm crews removed fish that had died from low oxygen levels. Recovery was apparently delayed, and Atlantic salmon were found some miles away by commercial fishermen. Fish farm critics have called for closed containment systems for the 35 million salmon raised in fish farms, noting that while Atlantic salmon are not supposed to survive in B.C. waters, escaped farm fish have apparently been found in 80 B.C. rivers, and juvenile Atlantic salmon have been found in three rivers. They called the latest escape “another blow to the health of our marine ecosystems and wild-salmon population.” Meanwhile, the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources has apparently approved the nation’s first tuna farm off the coast of the Big Island. The…
The Public Education Center’s (PEC’s) DC Bureau has published a two-part investigative report titled Fish and Paint Chips: The Science and Politics of Ocean Trash, which explores “how plastic and other debris in the world’s increasing pollutants could be channeling toxins straight onto our dinner plates through tainted seafood.” The first part considers research suggesting that once in the ocean, “small bits of plastic are thought to soak up chemicals from paint chips, old metal and other garbage and eventually end up in the guts of the fish we eat.” According to PEC, these floating plastic pellets can act as a “toxic sponge,” absorbing chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), when passing through “five so-called pollution gyres – massive fields of waste collected by wind and ocean currents in the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific and Indian oceans.” Although some experts are apparently reluctant to extrapolate human health…
A University of Louisville neurologist has published a report questioning the safety of farmed fish that are fed cattle byproducts, which could allegedly present a risk of transmitting mad cow disease to humans. Robert P. Friedland, et al, “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Aquaculture,” Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (June 2009). Friedland and his co-authors have urged government regulators to ban feeding cow meat or bone meal to fish until the safety of this common practice can be confirmed. “We have not proven that it’s possible for fish to transmit the disease to humans,” Friedland was quoted as saying. “Still, we believe that out of reasonable caution for public health, the practice of feeding rendered cows to fish should be prohibited. Fish do very well in the seas without eating cows.” Although no cases of mad cow disease have been linked to eating farmed fish, the report claims that this does not…
