Source: www.safeharborfoods.com
While most nutrition experts recommend that you eat seafood regularly, the lack of reliable data regarding mercury levels in fish has made eating right more challenging.
Safe Harbor, a San Rafael based mercury certification seafood program, tests more seafood for mercury each year than any other company or government agency in the world. As a result, it has been adopted by major retailers such as Bristol Farms, Haggen Markets and Top Foods.
With power plants and auto-scrap facilities emitting 62 tons of mercury pollution annually into our air and water (Natural Resources Defense Council), mercury found in seafood has emerged as a major health concern. So much so that the Obama administration has already prompted the EPA to draft more stringent controls on mercury emissions and may overturn the rule that allows utilities to purchase emission credits in lieu of emissions reduction.
But even with these mandates and FDA guidelines in place, seafood lovers are still at risk. The National Fisheries Institute, a trade group that represents the multi-billion dollar seafood industry, was quoted last week by KTLA-5 ( Los Angeles ) as saying, “Seafood does not need to be certified by Safe Harbor for consumers to know it is safe.” And yet, without Safe Harbor , NO testing would be done to ensure the fish that makes its way into restaurants and stores does not contain excessive mercury levels. You can view the KTLA video here.
While eating fish might be good for pregnant women in theory, exposure to even low levels of mercury, poses the greatest risk to women and children. It can damage their brain, kidneys and disrupt neurological development. One in six U.S. women of childbearing age has blood mercury levels exceeding “safe” levels, as found by the EPA and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a nonprofit organization of doctors and leading healthcare institutions, including Cornell University and Kaiser Permanente.
KPIX-5 (San Francisco)’s Sue Kwon experimented by eating a can of tuna for 20 days to discover that her blood mercury level had ballooned from a low 4 micrograms per liter to 17.2. Dr. Jane Hightower, an independent critic of the powerful fisheries lobby, said if Ms. Kwon were pregnant, she only needed to reach a 14 blood mercury level before she was "knocking IQ points off her child's brain.”
Safe Harbor offers seafood distributors a way to guarantee that the fish they sell does not exceed Safe Harbor standards which are considerably more stringent than those established by the FDA. Safe Harbor ’s specialized technology tests every piece of seafood quickly, efficiently and economically for low-mercury certification. So why aren't more retailers rushing to put proper testing methods in place?
Safe Harbor Certified Seafood® is now available at the following stores:
Seafoods.com
Seafoods.com
Bristol Farms
www.bristolfarms.com
Top Foods
www.top-foods.com
Haggen Markets
www.haggen.com
Comments