Posted June 2, 2014
 
The head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says new advisory guidelines are on the way for pregnant women concerning mercury levels in seafood, according to an article on Kansas First News available here. ABC News also published an article available here, Houston Chronicle here, and The Ledger here.
Commissioner Margaret Hamburg says the agency is not planning to require food labels, but it will update its guidelines on mercury in different varieties of seafood and their effects on pregnant women.
“It’s an advisory, not an effort to mandate labeling,” Hamburg said on ABC News. “Different seafood products do contain different levels of mercury, and so different seafood products can be rated in terms of levels of mercury.”
Consuming mercury from seafood is not a health risk for most people, but for many years, the FDA has expressed concerns for pregnant women. Certain types of high-mercury fish could harm a developing brain in pregnant women, those who may become pregnant, and young children.
The agency has been sued by consumer groups claiming the warnings were not specific enough on what to avoid and wanting labels to indicate which products are safe to consume, according to The Ledger.
“We can’t ask consumers to memorize two different lists of fish,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of the groups that sued.
The seafood industry says the government should look at all seafood and not mercury by itself. Jennifer McGuire, of the National Fisheries Institute, says the original FDA guidelines cautioned against some types of fish for pregnant women just served to decrease overall intake, according to ABC News.
“That would be very concerning if there was a ‘good fish, bad fish’ list,” she said.
The government’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines incorporated FDA’s warning to say that breastfeeding women should consumer 8 to 12 ounces of a variety of seafood per week, but they should avoid tilefish, shark, swordfish, and king mackerel due to the mercury level. They also advised to limit white albacore tuna to six ounces a week.

 

For more information on food labeling, please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
 
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