WASHINGTON - Encouraging consumers to eat more seafood, a new government study said the benefits of fish and seafood outweigh the risks from contaminants.
Yet, many environmental groups criticized the report, released last week by the Institute of Medicine here, saying it failed to fully address several key environmental and public health issues.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioned the study, "Seafood Choices: Balancing Benefits and Risks," which reviewed existing scientific evidence on seafood's benefits and risks and offered examples of how the information might be presented in a more coherent way to the public.
As consumption of seafood has increased, groups have raised a number of concerns about the potential risks associated with seafood, said Malden Nesheim, professor emeritus and provost emeritus, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and chair of the committee that wrote the report. Consumers get mixed messages about seafood. While the government and states have issued advisories urging people to exercise caution when eating certain species or fish from specific waters, consumers also hear that seafood is a good source of nutrients, he said.
"To address these concerns, our committee was charged with reviewing the available evidence on benefits and risks associated with seafood consumption and recommending ways to help consumers make informed choices," Nesheim said.
The primary message the committee wanted to deliver was that people can enjoy more seafood than they do, that they can consume at least two servings of a variety of seafood per week, but that the benefits and risks can vary for different populations.
The report recommends that a reasonable intake for children under 12 and females who are nursing, pregnant or may become pregnant is two 3-ounce cooked (4-ounce raw) servings per week, but can safely consume up to 12 ounces per week, including 6 ounces of white tuna. Children's intake should be age-appropriate and both populations are advised to avoid large predatory fish such as shark, swordfish, tilefish or king mackerel because these contain higher mercury levels.
Also, healthy adolescents and adults, as well as those at risk of coronary heart disease, should select from a variety of seafood types to reduce the risk of exposure to contaminants from a single source if they consume more than two servings per week.
"I think one thing that the Institute did is really stress the point that the variety of seafood is very important, as with any food source, but that eating seafood is healthy," said William Hogarth, director of the National Marine Fisheries Services, NOAA.
"We think those levels [of recommended servings] are levels in which you can still manage the risks and derive some benefits," said Susan Krebs-Smith, chief, risk factor monitoring and methods branch, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Md., who is also on the committee that wrote the report.
Many environmental organizations and agencies, however, said they were disturbed by what appeared to be a one-sided message. They are concerned the report did not fully address a number of issues related to the environment and public health.
"We were expecting more of a holistic treatment from the IOM in trying to get the information to consumers so they could make better seafood choices. We support that and we were looking forward to this as a really ground-breaking document but if their goal was to clarify consumer confusion, in our view, they failed," said Gerald Leape, vice president of marine conservation for the National Environmental Trust here.
Leape also said he believes more should have been done on examining the environmental impact of encouraging fish consumption and even described the report as a step back in fishery management.
"We are in the throws of trying to gain reforms in our fishery management law to address some of the problems plaguing our fisheries and to us, this report is a step backward in that regard," Leape said. "They basically said that that's just not something they looked into and we believe they should have."
In a follow-up briefing, Hogarth said NOAA had nothing to do with who was on the panel.
"When we fund this study, we do not even know who is on the board, we do not have anything to do with it except for paying the money and giving them some questions or what we are after in the study, and that's the last we see of it until they brief us," Hogarth said.
According to Nesheim's opening statement in releasing the report, the committee was not asked to answer questions or make recommendations about environmental concerns related to seafood but it recognized that methods of seafood production, harvesting and processing have important environmental consequences.
Leape also expressed concern about the panel member selections.
"The absence was glaring of anyone who would be able to speak to the environmental impacts of either aquacultural operations or the problems facing our wild fisheries," he said. "Especially with NOAA being the primary sponsor of this report, we were stunned."
George Leonard, science manager at the Seafood Watch program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, attempted to get a seat on the panel, but was refused, according to Leape.
"Consumers are an important part of this, yet they only had one member on the panel and that was from the Consumer Alliance of Canada, even though there are many groups in the U.S. who have been very active on the consumer movement, like Dr. Leonard," Leape said.
Leonard agreed that although he is not necessarily an expert in health information and most of his work has been focused on looking at the relative sustainability of farmed and wild fish, the environmental impacts of consuming either wild or farmed fish cannot be ignored when talking about the health benefits of seafood.
"We're very much interested in balanced information, providing consumers with a range of information and we're somewhat disturbed by today's report that seemed to essentially be a blanket [recommendation] to increase seafood consumption," Leonard said. "It's clear that some kinds of seafood are good choices from a health standpoint, but we would ask consumers to match the positive benefits of eating seafood with reducing the environmental footprint of the seafood that they choose to consume."
Arnold Schecter, professor of environmental sciences, University of Texas School of Public Health, also expressed disappointment with the report. While many of the sources used were excellent, Schecter said he was surprised that a 1998 evaluation of the toxicity of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and dioxins was used instead of the most recent 2005 evaluation.
Schecter also noted the report failed to address the problem with flame retardants polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, contaminating fish. Dioxins and PCB levels are decreasing, and mixtures of chemicals exist for which the toxicity for nursing infants and developing fetuses is still unknown.
In response, Hogarth and Dariush Mozaffarian - one of the authors of the complementary report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association containing additional research on seafood and health from the Harvard School of Public Health, and an instructor in the Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health - stated they believe concern over the environment should not be confused with what is healthy for consumers.
"While we should definitely keep in mind, do research and try to improve everything we can about the way we obtain our fish, that's a separate issue from whether fish is a healthy food," Mozaffarian said. "I don't think those issues should be confused, so that concern over the environment should not confuse the message about whether fish is healthy or not. It's a separate but related concern. That wasn't the focus of our report but it is an important issue."
Environmental issues should be separated from public health concerns, Hogarth said.
"Sometimes I think we've gotten fisheries management too mixed up in public health and there are groups that would like to keep the two confused so the American public will not utilize seafood, as healthy as it is, but avoid it to try to address fishery management issues, which is totally a disservice to the American consumer," Hogarth said.
The report also focused on communicating an integrated message to consumers, which will require more of a coordinated effort across the government to provide evidence of risk and information on health benefits, the panel said. The report provided guidance on how to communicate the information to people.
