On Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009, virtually every news source I visit on a regular basis had a story that was related to fish or shellfish on the front page — and no, they were not just all food blogs. I am officially dubbing this day Front-Page Fish Features Wednesday. (The alliteration would have been perfect if it were a Friday, but humor me.) There were articles about the beginning of the annual scallop harvest on Long Island in The New York Times and a piece about tainted imported Asian catfish from The Houston Chronicle — a source which I don't actually check regularly, but a friend e-mailed me a link to it.
Two fish stories in particular are making quite a splash.
The first story I saw on NJ.com, home of The Star Ledger. The article discussed the results of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Lake Fish Tissue Study. The EPA sampled 881 freshwater fish in 500 lakes and reservoirs across the continental United States from 2000 to 2003 to assess contamination levels. Researchers tested the fish for 268 toxins that can cause illness in humans; 17 percent of the lakes examined contained toxins "at levels of potential concern," according to the EPA. Two lakes in New Jersey and seven in Massachusetts had contamination problems. Who's The Armpit now? (Obviously I understand that more samples were taken in Massachusetts because it has more lakes than New Jersey so the contamination levels are not necessarily higher, but again, humor me.)
An even fishier statistic is that every single sample contained mercury, and about 49 percent of the fish had mercury levels that exceed the EPA's safety recommendations for consumption. If only Jeremy Piven had said he got mercury poisoning from eating freshwater fish he caught himself! He would have had an even harder time of it when he first made the ridiculous claim last December, but who would have thought he could have been vindicated by the EPA a year later?
The second story has spawned a school of articles in the past month, but things came to a head for Front-Page Fish Features Wednesday. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month announced that it wanted to ban the sale of raw Gulf Coast oysters that are untreated and harvested in warm months because they are more likely to contain Vibrio vulnificus, a bacterium that causes about 15 deaths per year. Bacteria can be killed post-harvest if oysters are treated with processes such as pasteurization or freezing.
Everyone from senators to oyster aficionados thought the FDA was floundering. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) sponsored a bill to ban funding for the initiative, and a hearing condemning the actions of the FDA was held on Capitol Hill on Nov. 10. The outrage was two-fold. First, most of the oyster farms on the Gulf Coast are small, family-owned businesses and the technology to treat the bivalves post-harvest is well behind their means; second, the treatments affect the flavor and texture of a raw oyster. The FDA announced on Nov. 13 that it will postpone the ban indefinitely and that it plans to look into initiatives to help small oyster farmers afford post-harvest treatments. I think the FDA came out of nowhere with its proposed ban. There are certainly foods that cause more than 15 deaths per year — why pick on oysters? The benefits of the ban do not outweigh the costs. If the farmers need to buy expensive equipment, the price will get passed on to consumers, who will in turn be less likely to eat the oysters because they don't taste the same. Personally, I am glad to see that the FDA's initiative has been shucked.
