News Coverage
New advisory on fish coming from federal agency
Published June 30, 2003
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is revising its advice to the public on eating mercury-contaminated fish, but will not release a new warning until it holds private meetings with seafood industry representatives and other "stakeholders," an agency official said Tuesday.
The agency is setting up separate meetings over the next month with the seafood industry, health professionals, state representatives, consumer groups and environmentalists to seek their advice on what the new advisory should say, Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's chief medical officer, said in an interview.
The goal is to prepare a draft advisory by Sept. 30 saying which species of fish are high in mercury and how much fish can be safely consumed, Acheson said. He declined to say how long it might be before the advisory is issued or even whether the process might take months or years.
"It's certainly not FDA's intention to delay important health information," Acheson said.
The stakeholder meetings will not be open to the public, Acheson said. The agency has not yet decided whether it will hold public meetings before issuing the new advisory.
Instead, the FDA will ask seafood industry representatives and other stakeholders whether they feel the agency should seek public input, Acheson said.
The agency's decision to revisit its mercury advisory is unrelated to a new international safety standard for mercury adopted last week by a joint World Health Organization-U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization committee, Acheson said.
That new standard is twice as tough at the one the FDA used to calculate how much mercury-containing fish is safe for sensitive populations like women of childbearing age and young children to consume.
"When the rest of the world adopts the new (international) standard, that will leave the United States with the weakest mercury standard in the world," said Richard Wiles of the Environmental Working Group, a national organization. "It's clear the FDA should have moved sooner. There is no excuse for the American public being left behind in terms of their protections."
The current FDA advisory, adopted in March 2001, urges pregnant women and children to eat no more than 12 ounces of a variety of fish a week. It makes no mention of tuna, the most consumed fish in the United States, even though scientists, environmentalists and consumer advocates have urged the agency for years to caution women and children to limit tuna consumption.
Last summer, the FDA's own science advisory committee urged the agency to specifically include advice to pregnant women on eating canned tuna and to test more seafood, including tuna, for mercury.
Three years ago, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report warning that an estimated 60,000 children born each year in the United States are at risk of learning disabilities and developmental disorders because their mothers were exposed to elevated levels of mercury while pregnant.
Since the academy's report was published, the mercury levels found in the blood of American women surveyed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have prompted an increased estimate of the number of children born each year at risk of neurological damage to over 300,000.
Members of the academy committee met with FDA officials after their report was published and urged them to specifically warn women about the risks of eating canned tuna while pregnant.
FDA officials have resisted including tuna in their recommendation, saying they don't want to scare American consumers away from eating any tuna because the fish has important health benefits, including oils that may reduce the risk of heart disease.
Fish are the chief source of human exposure to methyl mercury, the most toxic form of mercury. Larger, longer-lived species of fish, including some species of tuna, tend to have more mercury in their flesh than other species. People generally also eat tuna more frequently than other kinds of fish.