Two of the more prominent news outlets in the United States took seafood to task recently. In late November, NBC’s popular morning show “Today” called out imported seafood for containing trace amounts of banned substances, while in early December Consumer Reports magazine warned pregnant and nursing women and young children to avoid eating tuna.
Both reports ruffled more than a few feathers in the industry, but one gained much more traction than the other.
Despite “Today’s” high profile and nearly 5 million viewers, and that the story reran on “NBC Nightly News,” few mainstream media outlets followed up on the story. There were exceptions, such as the Discovery Channel’s new website, which ran the headline “Contaminated Seafood Sneaking Past Security.”
Though the story gained little traction, the backlash from the industry was significant. Numerous organizations and agencies, including the National Fisheries Institute, U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Thailand’s Agriculture Ministry, responded to the report by pointing out its inaccuracies. NFI posted a YouTube video clip identifying the report’s shortcomings.
“Today” did, however, add to its website the FDA’s response to its report.
On the other hand, Consumer Reports expose on canned and pouched tuna did catch the eye of the mainstream media, reawaking the mercury-in-fish debate, was has been dormant for a while in consumers’ minds.
Time magazine, CNN, ABC and The New York Times are just a few of the high-profile news outlets that ran news of the report.
Again, NFI fired back, calling the story “simply a retread of a 2006 report that does a disservice to its readers using tried and true tactics to exaggerate concern.” WebMD is among the outlets that got the other side of the story by including NFI’s take on the matter.
The Center for Consumer Freedom also blasted the magazine, which has 7 million-plus subscribers: “Consumer Reports has gone back to the tired old narrative of warning Americans about vanishing low levels of mercury in canned tuna. Why the strong warnings? CR tested a whopping 42 cans of tuna to find out what the FDA already knows: Tuna is actually low in mercury. So low, in fact, that nothing in the magazine’s tests suggests that tuna’s mercury levels hit one-tenth of what the FDA says might be cause for concern.”
