Activist Fish Report Full
of Chum If you thought the activist Environmental Working Group was silly for making hay over Vitamin A, it’s facing some new competition in the “eternally worrisome” department from a group called Food and Water Watch (FWW). This spin-off of Ralph Nader’s hand-wringing Public Citizen group released a so-called dirty dozen list last week, showing what it claims are the 12 most “toxic” fish. As expected, this is flawed piece that guts any hope of objectivity. How unsound is it? For starters, the National Fisheries Institute (a trade group) notes that FWW can’t even get the most basic facts correct:
FWW also cites the presence of mercury as a reason that fish like bluefin tuna and Chilean seabass are “toxic.” Since vanishingly small levels of mercury are present in pretty much every fish (and always have been), the presumption seems to be that eating just about any fish presents a health risk. True? Nope. The Food and Drug Administration has an “Action Level” for mercury in fish, and notes that it was “established to limit consumers’ methyl mercury exposure to levels 10 times lower than the lowest levels associated with adverse effects.” Translation: Take FWW’s worry-wart routine with a ten-fold grain of salt. The EPA (which published a 2004 advisory about the amount of fish pregnant women and children should eat) also uses a heavily padded safety margin in its “Reference Dose.” Groups like FWW, of course, abuse the government’s hyper-precautionary guidelines in order to churn hype. But if you’re still worried, just remember that there’s not a single case in the medical literature of someone getting mercury poisoning from commercially bought seafood in the United States. That’s a big reason that schools of top scientists are reminding the public that the well-known benefits of eating fish outweigh the oft-touted but hypothetical risks of mercury. Many are even asking the federal government to immediately update its 2004 advisory so that it reflects the most current research. In the meantime, you can determine how much fish you can be safely eating at our website named, appropriately, HowMuchFish.com. We’ll be re-launching it soon, with a whole raft of new fish species. HSUS Doubles Down on Salmonella Spin 
After we called out the “Humane Society” of the United States last week for milking the egg recall in the interest of animal rights, we thought the group might shape up. Instead, HSUS has boldly (and ridiculously) continued to repeat its claim that “every scientific study” in recent memory has linked commonly used hen cage systems with a higher incidence of Salmonella. Today, HSUS announced an advertising campaign centered on that same blatantly false talking point. And we’re firing back with a press release exposing HSUS’s cherry-picking and reckless disregard for the very scientific literature it cites:
We hoped HSUS wouldn’t play Russian Roulette with its already dwindling credibility over something this obvious. But HSUS might want to spend part of its $132 million budget on a few fact-checkers. It would certainly be more productive than repeating the same thing over and over, and hoping it magically becomes true. Cracking Michael Pollan's Salmonella Opportunism 
As with most food crises, there’s no shortage of activists offering their own self-serving “solutions” along with the recall of more than 500 million eggs. The animal-rights “Humane Society” of the United States has been steadily spinning science to promote its “cage-free” emotionalism. And PETA is flat-out calling for a universal vegan diet (while conveniently forgetting that veggies can get Salmonella, too). Now comes Supreme Foodie Commander Michael Pollan. His advice? Wax nostalgic and pay more for your food by going “organic”:
Pollan even admits that he doesn’t know if his preferred organic eggs are any safer (they aren’t), and told CNN that he just wants eggs from chickens raised like they did in the old days, “before we had to worry about salmonella.” But there’s a difference between worries and existence. As Reason magazine’s Ronald Bailey wrote in 2006:
There’s nothing wrong with shopping at the farmer’s market like Pollan—assuming you can afford $5 pints of raspberries. But Pollan should concede that modern food production has improved food safety in general, while providing cheap food to all Americans. Instead, his broken-record sound
track keeps replaying the advice of a high-and-mighty activist who would love nothing more than to raise the price of eggs to $8 per dozen.
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