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Spreading salmon scare stories
Magnus Linklater
Scotland on Sunday 11th January 2004
Reproduced with kind permission
filed 12 January 2004
www.land-care.org.uk
WHAT an irony that America, the most health-conscious
nation in the world, which insists that its beef is safe to eat,
despite an outbreak of BSE, should be attempting to decimate the
Scottish farmed salmon industry by spreading wholly unjustified
scare stories.
It is barely 10 days since the USA launched a
campaign to persuade the dozen or so countries that have suspended
imports of American beef that the fears about its safety were grossly
exaggerated.
Now its Environmental Protection Agency has issued
a report which claims that Scottish farmed salmon is full of toxins
and potentially carcinogenic. Yet the evidence is far flimsier,
far less convincing and far more distorted than the case against
their own contaminated meat.
The headlines on Friday morning said it all: ‘Farmed
salmon linked to cancer risk’, they screamed; ‘Eat salmon
only three times a year’; ‘Eating salmon can seriously
damage your health’. For an industry which is already in a
fragile state, with firms in Shetland in particular facing ruin
because they are being squeezed out by the powerful Norwegians,
it was a potential body-blow.
Consumers who have been persuaded that eating
fish was a healthy alternative to meat must now be deeply confused.
The impact on sales could be devastating.
But let us look at the evidence which the EPA’s
own report contained. It claimed that farmed salmon had "higher
concentrations" of toxins than wild fish. It pointed the finger
at North Atlantic fish in particular, saying that those from Scotland,
the Faroe Islands and Denmark were the worst affected, or "polluted"
as the report puts it.
It was full of references to bioaccumulative contaminants
and organochlorines, all of which sounded nasty and were, said the
scientists, linked to cancer and birth defects. It suggested consumers
should cut back on eating it to once every two months if they wanted
to stay healthy.
Surprisingly, it revealed that its own fish were
safe. North American farmed salmon, it said, had lower levels of
chemicals, allowing it to be eaten in greater quantities. Salmon
from the Pacific in particular was far purer than its Atlantic counterparts.
Yet closer scrutiny of this report reveals something
which has not been highlighted, and which finds no place in the
banner headlines.
The research is, in fact, thoroughly reassuring.
It shows that toxins are well below the guidelines produced by the
USA’s own Food and Drug Administration. Farmed salmon, which
are more closely monitored than almost any other sea food, have
levels of contaminants significantly lower than the thresholds set
by the European Union and the British Food Standards Agency.
What is more, the health benefits of eating it
far outweigh the risks, because of its oil, which is rich in nutrients.
Most devastating of all - although the report claims that farmed
salmon are more contaminated than wild ones, it admits that it never
carried out any tests on wild salmon and so was not able to make
any scientific comparison
The health benefits of eating it far outweigh
the risks because of its oil, rich in nutrients. One American scientist
who has read the report in detail, says that in his view it is an
argument for eating more farmed salmon rather than less. Sir John
Krebs, chairman of the FSA - and not a man to underestimate risks
- says that people should consume at least two portions of fish
a week, of which one should be oily, such as salmon. "There
is good evidence that eating oily fish reduces the risk of death
from recurrent heart attacks and that there is a similar effect
in relation to first heart attacks," he said.
The fact is that farmed salmon are only as healthy
as the food they consume, and this food is mainly composed of unadulterated
fish meal, manufactured from wild fish, caught in the oceans of
the world, which the EPA says are entirely safe to eat. Ironically
much of it is now imported from the South Atlantic - an area which
the EPA does not include in its structures. The rest comes from
the North Atlantic and this, far from becoming more contaminated,
has gradually been getting purer as toxins are reduced.
Gradually, more and more salmon are being fed
with soya, wheat and maize, and no-one, not even the EPA, has suggested
that these, too, are contaminated. The idea that farmed salmon are
pumped full of chemicals is an urban myth. Any additives, such as
those used to control sea-lice for instance, are carefully monitored
by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, which is rigorous
in ensuring that they stay well below internationally accepted levels.
So where does the scare come from, and why is
it being spread so zealously by the Americans? A cynic would have
no difficulty in reaching a conclusion. This would appear to be
a naked bid to protect the USA’s own farmed salmon industry,
and to promote the Pacific salmon which it claims is entirely safe
to eat.
By alleging that North European salmon are contaminated,
it effectively undermines the opposition while promoting its own
product. If that were the case, then it would be remarkably short-sighted.
There would be no sympathy whatsoever for US beef producers as they
attempt to shore up their own industry; and the next time there
was even the smallest scare story about American food, the Europeans
would simply turn their backs on it.
A more likely explanation is the sheer paranoia
of American consumers, producers and scientists alike. Fearful of
incurring even the smallest risk, they will flee from the minutest
evidence of contamination, while ignoring the research which shows
that the particular food complained of is, by and large, safe to
eat.
The same is true of diseases and potential epidemics.
When Sars broke out in the Far East last year, there was widespread
panic. Flights were cancelled, travellers were turned back, and
Toronto - a Canadian city with close Far Eastern connections - was
virtually isolated. Yet the worldwide death toll from Sars ended
up at 774 - less than a fifth of those who die annually from influenza
in Britain alone.
It is equally true that the threat of BSE being
passed to humans is minimal. The more scientific evidence that emerges
about vCJD, the so-called ‘human form of mad cow disease’,
the clearer it becomes that humans are not in fact at risk, since
it is unlikely to be passed on. The threatened death toll has never
materialised, and even now it is tailing off into single figures.
So the Americans are right to play down the risk
from their single case of BSE-infected cattle. But if they want
our support, they should desist from spreading unwarranted scare
stories about other people’s food.
The best thing they can do to redress the damage
is to issue a clear statement now which emphasises that their own
report has been widely misunderstood.
In fact, they should say, it demonstrates that
Scottish, Norwegian and Irish farmed salmon is perfectly safe to
eat, is good for your health, and should, if anything, be consumed
in greater quantities than before. Then we can all breathe easier.
Magnus Linklater
Scotland on Sunday 11 January 2004
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