San Francisco, CA – Today, in Hawai`i, the industry-dominated Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries held a press conference to announce the reopening of a fishery that NOAA Fisheries had previously closed because the fishery was killing enough Pacific leatherbacks to put them on a direct path towards extinction.
San Francisco, CA– According to its own data, the FDA’s new consumer advisory released today will actually put women and children at serious risk from mercury poisoning. The FDA advisory specifically suggests that it is safe “to eat up to 6 ounces of albacore tuna per week, which, by its own data, is known to contain three times as much mercury on average as chunk light tuna. Environmentalists are calling on the FDA to remove albacore tuna from the list of safe seafood and to require warning signs at seafood counters across the country.
March 11, 2004—Today, the US Fisheries Service issued new rules banning California longline fishing from targeting swordfish from a huge swath of the Pacific Ocean. The final rule comes on the heels of an August 2003 decision by the federal Ninth Circuit Court concurring with environmentalists that the Fisheries Service had failed to conduct the proper environmental review before issuing permits to the fishery.
Website Gives Consumers Important Mercury Consumption Information
San Francisco– A California-based nonprofit organization today released an easy-to-use online seafood mercury calculator (http://www.gotmercury.org ) to help consumers make informed choices about their seafood consumption. The calculator allows consumers to calculate what their blood mercury levels would be from eating mercury–contaminated seafood and compare it to values that are considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
