Not surprisingly, Nell Halse, general manager of the New Brunswick Salmon Growers Association (NBSGA), took issue with the Science report. (see related article)
“Ignoring for the moment that institutions as disparate as Health Canada and the American Health Association maintain that eating salmon is healthy for you, I question the reasoning behind going after just farmed salmon. Let’s face it, just about every food we eat has some PCBs, most of them much more than farmed salmon. Why didn’t they look at foods with much higher levels?”
The Science report “didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know,” she said. “The difference is they used a large sample, so of course their numbers are bigger.”
She sees the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as the relevant regulatory agency on this issue, rather than the Environmental Protection Agency, cited by Science.
“Our own internal testing confirms the fact that we are far below the tolerance levels set by the FDA, which sets the guidelines that should have been used by the report,” she said.
She added that with roughly 4,000 New Brunswickers earning a living from farmed salmon, “it’s to our best interest to make sure that the product is safe for consumers. One other point: I don’t want to give the impression that any level of PCBs is acceptable; we’re working hard to bring it down. But the fact remains that the benefits of eating farmed salmon far outweigh any risks.”
Health Canada weighed in as well, issuing the following statement: “While no amount of contaminants in our food supply is desirable, Health Canada researches and determines levels at which a contaminant does not pose a risk to human health. Fish, both farmed and wild, are tested by CFIA for contaminants, including PCBs. The results are compared with Health Canada-established standards for safe levels. Health Canada’s guideline for PCBs in fish is two parts per million. Based on Health Canada’s risk assessment, consuming farmed salmon does not pose a health risk to consumers.”