Currently browsing posts about: Fish

Now that the FDA has approved production of GMO salmon, here they come.  Next month, a land-enclosed fish farm in Indiana will start raising these fish.

These, you will recall, are salmon bioengineered to grow throughout the year.  They end up much bigger than wild salmon.

These have been a long time coming.  As I’ve written previously,

• The FDA’s approval has been controversial
• The salmon are likely to cause problems for retailers

One big question with farmed salmon is what to feed them.  They need sources of color (there’s a dye, asthaxanthin, for that) and of omega-3 fatty acids (other fish?).

Indiana is the leading soybean-producing state.  Maybe these salmon have a handy food source?

Here’s a report that’s been sitting in my “to post” file way too long.

This SeaChoice report is another blow to the reputation of farmed salmon:

SeaChoice looked at audits of 257 salmon farms between 2014 and 2018 to see whether the farms met standards of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council.  To be certified, farms must meet 100% of the standards.

Some did, but most did not.  The results?

Farmed salmon raise many environmental issues.  If these data are correct, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council needs to do a much more rigorous job—and be much more critical—of salmon farms seeking certification.

Caveat emptor.

Tomorrow: what’s happening with GMO salmon.

Seafood fraud, long a problem (I wrote about it in What to Eat), is still a problem.  The latest evidence comes from a report from the New York State Attorney General.

Investigators tested fish and found widespread mislabeling of just about every type of fish except striped bass.

I wish the figure displayed percentages instead of absolute numbers, but you get the idea.  Examples:

• Lemon sole       87.5%
• Red snapper     67.0%
• “Wild” salmon  27.6% (in quotes because some was farmed)

Overall, the investigation found 27% of seafood purchases to be mislabeled.  Some conclusions:

• Mislabeling was worse at some supermarkets more than others; for example, five chains had mislabeling rates of 50% or higher.
• Some fish are mislabeled more than others, especially lemon sole, red snapper, and grouper.
• Substitutes were cheaper, less desirable fish, sometimes with higher levels of mercury.
• Mislabeling was common throughout the state, but the mislabeling rate for New York City was nearly 43%.

If ever there was a call for caveat emptor, this is it.

What to do?  Ask.  Complain. Demand regulation.

Paul Greenberg.  The Omega Principle: Seafood and the Quest for a Long Life and a Healthier Planet.  Penguin Press, 2018.

This is the third installment of Paul Greenberg’s fish trilogy (the previous two are Four Fish and American Catch, both also well worth the read).

This one sounds like a book about nutrition—a nutrient—but it’s not.  It may have started out that way, as a book about omega-3 fatty acids whose principal dietary source is fish, but Greenberg soon figured out that claims for the miraculous health benefits of omega-3s don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Instead, he uses omega-3s as an organizing framework for discussing how we use and misuse fish for industrial purposes.  To do this, he travels.  He goes to the Mediterranean to examine what happens to anchovies, Peru to see what happens to anchoveta, to the Antarctic to see what happens to krill.

His point?  If we destroy the bottom of the seafood chain to make fishmeal or fertilizer, we destroy the ecology of fish higher up on the food chain.

Greenberg is a lively, entertaining writer who tells great fish tales in pursuit of a serious message: if we want food in our future, we need to eat lower on the food chain.

And the book comes with recipes.  My favorite: Roulades of Antarctic penguin breast.  It begins: “Never make this recipe, please.”

The two agencies have just issued advice to pregnant women about eating fish.

Fatty fish have long-chain omega-3 fatty acids which are good for health.

But some have methylmercury, which is toxic to the developing fetus.

And all have PCBs or other organic compounds that are unlikely to promote health.

The advice?  Eat 2 to 3 servings of lower-mercury fish per week for a total of 8-12 ounces

That’s fine, but which fish are low in methylmercury?

For this, the agencies have created an reference chart that sorts 62 types of fish into three categories:

“Best Choices” (eat two to three servings a week)

“Good Choices” (eat one serving a week)

“Fish to Avoid”

Here’s where things get tricky.

• Choices to avoid include, among others, Bigeye Tuna and Tilefish from the Gulf of Mexico.
• Good choices include Albacore and Yellowfin Tuna and Tilefish from the Atlantic Ocean.

Good luck telling the difference.

As I’ve written before (and also see this post and this one about fish politics), if you want to avoid methylmercury during pregnancy, it’s best to avoid tuna.  Consumer Reports advises pregnant women not to eat tuna at all.

Center for Science in the Public Interest says:

The best advice for pregnant or nursing women and parents of small children is to choose fish that are low in mercury and high in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon and sardines. They should avoid albacore tuna altogether, and consume tuna labeled as ‘light tuna’ very sparingly — no more than two ounces per week for women and one ounce per week for kids.

And are PCBs a non-issue?  Could fish politics have anything to do with this?

Here are the documents

• Eating Fish: What Pregnant Women and Parents Should Know
• Federal Register Notice Announcing the Advice
• FDA and EPA final advice (this updates advice proposed in June 2014)

Miriam Horn.  Rancher, Farmer Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland.  WW Norton, 2016.

Actually, this book should be titled “Rancher, Farmer, Riverman, Shrimper, Fisherman: Conservation of Life around the Mississippi River.” It consists of deep interviews with one person in each category who is working hard to protect some part of the environment.

My favorite is the shrimper, the truly remarkable woman who is devoting her life to saving the livelihoods of the people engaged in Louisiana’s highly endangered—by hurricanes, floods, oil spills, and regulators—shrimp-fishing industry.

Each of the people highlighted in this book is doing something for conservation, not always in the ways you and I might choose.  As Miriam Horn explains in her introduction,

Which is not to say they have found the perfect way to fish or farm; they would be the first to acknowledge that there is no such ideal.  Rather, their heroism lied in the depth of their commitment to consider the largest implications of what they do, across geographic and generational lines; to forever listen more intently, weight each choice for the impact it will have on their neighbors and all of life, challenge themselves to do better as they understand more and the world changes around them.

The Senate just voted to reverse a decision of Congress last year to remove catfish inspection from the FDA (which is usually in charge of regulating seafood) and give it to the USDA (which usually regulates meat and poultry).

Why did the 2008 and 2012 farm bills say that catfish inspection should be given to USDA?

It depends on whom you ask.

• Defenders say it’s because USDA has the resources to protect us against unsafe Vietnamese catfish.
• Critics said it’s to protect the Mississippi catfish industry against the food safety hazards of cheap imported catfish from Vietnam.

Indeed, the USDA inspection program is finding antibiotics and other unapproved carcinogens in catfish imported from Vietnam.

This issue, however, is a sticking point in US negotiations with Vietnam over the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

Vietnam wants the USDA catfish inspection removed as an unfair barrier to trade.

As I wrote about this issue in 2013,

What is this about?  Not fish safety, really.  It’s about protecting catfish farmers in the South and setting up “more rigorous” safety criteria that will exclude competitive foreign catfish imports, especially from Vietnam.

Food retailers and retail trade associations are for reverting inspection to FDA. They say USDA’s catfish inspection program will take years to allow imports from Vietnam, thereby causing the cost of domestic catfish to rise.

But today, Politico Morning Agriculture reports that more than 100 House Republicans are urging repeal of the USDA’s catfish inspection program, pointing out that

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has 10 times stated that this program is “duplicative” and at “high risk” for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement…This is not a food safety issue.  USDA acknowledges that catfish, regardless of where it comes from, is considered a “low risk food.”

When I wrote this issue previously, I got comments that I needed to better appreciate the superiority of USDA’s import safety program.  As I said in response:

It’s not surprising if USDA’s import safety system is better than the FDA’s.  USDA gets $14 million a year to run its currently non-operating catfish inspection system.  The FDA gets $700,000 and, according to the Government Accountability Office, has managed pretty well with it.

My conclusion then and now:

If the political fuss over catfish inspection reveals anything, it is why we so badly need a single food safety agency—one that combines and integrates the food safety functions of USDA and FDA—to ensure the safety of the American food supply.

Documents

• The Senate resolution
• USDA’s catfish inspection program

State GMO labeling bills: While Congress dithers, states are getting busy.  The Sunlight Foundation’s SCOUT database on state GMO legislative initiatives is searchable.  Examples:

• Alaska 
• Florida
• Massachusetts
• Missouri
• New Jersey
• New York
• Rhode Island

Detente between producers of GMO and labeling advocates: USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack held a meeting to attempt to forge some kind of accord between producers of GMO foods and advocates for GMO labels.  By all reports, it didn’t work.  Earlier, Vilsack tried to negotiate detente between GMO producers and producers of organic foods.  That didn’t work either.

GMO Salmon: The FDA says it will not allow imports of GMO salmon.  Since GMO salmon are produced in Canada and Panama, this action in effect bans GMO salmon from the US food supply.  The FDA is working on labeling guidelines and probably wants them out before allowing imports.

Monsanto’s conversation:  Monsanto’s interactive website invites you to be part of the conversation.  Aything you like.  Someone from Monsanto will respond.  This site is clearly keeping Monsanto’s PR staff on its toes. Here is just one example: