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.
