News Coverage
Panelist: Fish advisory ignored findings
Published March 29, 2004
A new FDA advisory on how much canned tuna is safe to eat ignores recommendations made by the very panel assembled to study the matter, said a UA toxicologist and panel member.
The joint advisory from the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency recommends that pregnant women and women of childbearing age eat no more than 12 ounces of light tuna a week and 6 ounces of albacore tuna a week.
While tuna is a good, inexpensive source of protein and omega fatty acids, it should be eaten in moderation by people in the aforementioned categories. They should not be eating more than 6 ounces a week of light tuna and should be steering clear of albacore tuna altogether, said Vas Aposhian, a professor of pharmacology and molecular and cellular biology at the University of Arizona.
"When this thing came out, I was really distressed for two reasons," Aposhian said. "One, I think albacore has a lot of mercury in it. Second, we're an advisory panel, we don't get paid, and you would think that they would let the panel read the advisory before it came out just as common courtesy, and they didn't do that."
The FDA appointed Aposhian to the panel as a temporary voting member because "they did not have a toxicologist or anyone else who knew anything about methylmercury in fish," he said.
Bacteria and natural processes transform mercury, a naturally-occurring metal, into the organic mercury compound methylmercury, a poisonous substance. Methylmercury accumulates in streams, lakes and oceans. Organisms absorb the toxin, and each fish absorbs all the mercury of the organisms and smaller fish it has eaten, which is why large fish like sharks and albacore tuna have high methylmercury levels, Aposhian said.
High levels of mercury can be particularly harmful to the developing nervous systems of unborn babies and young children.
The panel was stacked with what Aposhian termed "food people."
"There is a communications expert, a member of the grocery store association and a couple of people who used to work for the FDA," he said. "They're good people. Don't misunderstand me, but they look at things differently."
An FDA spokeswoman declined to directly respond to Aposhian's charges.
"We're not going to comment on what one individual on the panel is saying," said Laura Alvey. "We did see a difference in albacore, but not enough to advise abstaining from it altogether. If anything, we would like people to eat more fish and shellfish. They're just not eating enough of it to begin with."
The advisory tells women to avoid shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish because they contain high levels of mercury, and advise that only about one average meal of 6 ounces per week of any fish caught in local lakes and streams be consumed, Alvey said.
Aposhian's concerns about albacore tuna are well warranted, said Dr. Andrew Weil, director of the UA's Integrative Medicine Program.
"I agree completely with Aposhian," Weil said. "Mercury content definitely correlates with the size of the fish."
Unlike the smaller fish canned and labeled as light tuna, albacore are "huge, long-lived fish" that ingest high levels of methylmercury. he said.
Albacore belongs in the same category as swordfish, tilefish and shark, Aposhian said.
Weil said that if people want to eat tuna, he recommends they seek out smaller companies buying and packing small fish.
"Small fish are often rejected by the big packers but are much safer," he said.
An old saying about the size of fish a person should consume has come back into vogue, Aposhian said.
"If the fish is small enough to fit on your plate, there isn't very much mercury in it, because it's a small young fish," he said.
To read the new FDA advisory on mercury in canned tuna, go to vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/ admehg3.html.