The Safe Harbor brand and high technology used to almost instantly determine mercury content in fish are being tested by Holiday Quality Foods, a supermarket chain based in Northern California, and wholesaler Pacific Seafood Group, which distributes fish to groceries throughout Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, California, Nevada and Utah.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned that high concentrations of mercury in pregnant women, nursing mothers and young children are harmful to brain development. Swordfish, shark and tuna generally contain more mercury than salmon and other smaller fish.

The Holiday grocery chain has seen its sale of fish drop 3% during the past two years as the mercury warnings became public. The low-mercury brand of fish "is a way to regain the confidence of consumers who worry about seafood and mercury," Chuck Holman, retail sales manager for Pacific Seafood, Holiday's supplier, told the Times. "The technology is available, so we might as well use it."

Testing 1,000 pounds a day

Pacific Seafood processes as much as 250,000 pounds of fish and shellfish daily for Albertsons supermarkets, Outback Steakhouse, Red Lobster restaurants and other clients. More than 1,000 pounds of seafood a day makes an extra stop at a testing table where workers use syringes and biopsy needles to extract a sample for insertion into the mercury testing device. A minute later, the results show whether the fish is worthy of a Safe Harbor label, the Times reported.

"We expect to reject at least half of the fish we test," said Malcolm Wittenberg, chief executive of Micro Analytical, the California company that developed the testing device.

Safe Harbor brand fish is certified to have mercury concentrations well below the FDA limit of 1 part per million. Other grocery chains and wholesalers are keeping close tabs on the test by Holiday and Pacific Seafood. FDA officials said they, too, are watching the results to ensure the testing is accurate.

The Safe Harbor Brand comes at a time when federal government warned in January that some cans of light tuna contain high levels of mercury. FDA tests also discovered high levels of mercury in samples of Chilean sea bass and ahi, a popular sushi and steak fish also known as big-eye tuna that possibly contains nearly twice as much mercury as albacore tuna.

Californians who volunteered for a nationwide study of mercury contamination had among the worst levels in the country, with nearly one-third of those tested having concentrations that exceeded safe levels, the Times reported. The Environmental Quality Institute at University of North Carolina-Asheville conducted the tests for the environmental groups Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, with results released in early February.

However, medical and nutritional experts say the health benefits of eating fish far outweigh the risks of pollution, at least according to experts speaking at a recent national science convention.

Scientists say that mercury drops out of the atmosphere into lakes, streams, rivers and oceans, but 85 percent of the mercury pollution comes from power plants that burn coal and incinerators that burn trash.

Source: Los Angeles Times
Posted by: Steve Smith
Website: www.latimes.com

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