Sea
Port’s advice to the FDA for modernizing its outdated Seafood Consumption
Guidelines
Sea Port’s Input: The FDA should purpose the modernization of
their outdated 2004 seafood consumption guidelines to overwhelmingly promote
the “Key” positive message for increasing seafood consumption in America and to
finally
eliminate the unrealistic concerns of methylmercury poisoning risks
that have unfortunately stolen the spotlight away from the good news of
seafood’s many health benefits. The FDA
cannot continue to allow the very slight chances of consuming harmful levels of
methylmercury from wild caught seafood to keep on killing the “Key” message
that pregnant women or those who may become pregnant and all Americans need to
dramatically increase their seafood consumption levels.
In its revision, Sea Port advises that the FDA eliminate
the methylmercury fear by stressing the ridiculously low chances of being
poisoned when consuming wild caught and farmed seafood in America. This is appropriate to do so now and will be
even more relevant in future years when an ever-increasing percentage of our
seafood will come from farms (not wild fisheries) that will be essentially
methylmercury free.
Sea Port believes that the following points strongly
support the FDA acting on this revision advice:
·
The science in the FDA’s own recently released Net
Effects Study on Fish Consumption supports taking this positive non-fearful
perspective as exemplified by the finding that the 4 commercial wild caught
fish species that contain high levels of methylmercury (shark, swordfish, king
mackerel, tilefish) are outliers and contribute the equivalent weight of about
4 grains of rice to America’s per capita seafood consumption! This is a ridiculously low amount, yet it is
unfortunately given a disproportional level of risk credence in regards to methylmercury
poisoning exposure and hence creates a persistent and dominating unreasonable public fear
about eating all seafood categories
regardless if they are wild or farmed.
·
75% of our seafood consumption now comes from
just 10 seafood species/families that taken as a whole represent a negligible
methylmercury poisoning risk to the American public. Nearly 60% of our per capita intake of
seafood is now produced by aquaculture in which methylmercury accumulation in
the farmed output is negligible or non-existent.
·
In other countries that consume more than ten times as much seafood as
we do, such as Japan (160 lbs.) and Iceland (198 lbs.), their citizens
are not suffering from methylmercury poisoning problems.
·
Seafood is at least 7 times less likely to cause illnesses
of any kind compared to America’s most popular land based animal meat
proteins. This certainly helps support
the overall “key” message for increasing
seafood consumption without unreasonable fear.
In summary: The
bullet points listed above indicate that the FDA may be inadvertently
discouraging Americans to consume more seafood by currently overweighting the
risks of methylmercury poisoning and letting it become the controlling fear factor that kills the good news about seafood
consumption. Now is the
appropriate time for the FDA to modernize its seafood consumption guidelines
and to once and for all eliminate
this methylmercury fear. This is especially relevant going forward as
we enter a new dynamic era of seafood production in which farm raised seafood that
has negligible methylmercury concerns continues to increase its dominance in
the American seafood diet.
