Here’s a look at this week’s most popular stories on SeafoodSource:
1) At the ninth annual International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant (ICMGP) in Guiyang, China, a vast majority of the scientists polled by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) said methylmercury contamination in seafood is not a serious health threat to consumers. In results the CCF called “groundbreaking,” scientists agreed that “normal” consumption of seafood does not pose a health risk to adults, children, or developing fetuses.
2) The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Monday unanimously voted to uphold antidumping tariffs on Vietnamese pangasius. The commissioners ruled that revoking the tariffs would lead to continuation of material injury to the domestic catfish industry.
3) A new study made the claim that, if fed cow byproducts, farmed fish may be able to contract mad cow disease. While the researchers acknowledge that the risk of transmitting the disease from fish to humans is low, Canadian agencies on Thursday still fired back, and called the report outdated and said it doesn’t recognize new cattle feed controls introduced in 2007.
4) The latest in a string of Lacey Act violation convictions, Maryland-based Golden Eye Seafood and its owner, Robert Lumpkins, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and violating the act. Lumpkins admitted to falsely recording the amount of striped bass harvested by local fishermen and checked in through Golden Eye from 2003 to 2007.
5) University of North Dakota researchers released a study examining a new method for determining seafood consumption guidelines. The study claimed to provide a far more accurate prediction of seafood safety than current U.S. Food and Drug Administration criteria that are based solely on mercury content. The Selenium-Health Benefit Value (Se-HBV) criterion predicts risks or benefits of seafood consumption based on mercury and selenium content.
