CFM,

The study was funded by the Pew Charitable Trust, an organization that has no axe to grind, but tends toward the conservative, not as in political conservative, but more conservative as in their scientists are likely to be more conservative than the FDA regarding "safe" levels of PCBs and Dioxin in food. My oldest daughter worked for Pew until last year, researching global climate change, as in global warming.

Grandpa,

I don't trust the FDA to decide what safe levels of toxins are in my diet. FDA standards are very much influenced by politics, particularly by well-financed purveyors of contaminated food. Take for example the recent case of Mad Cow Disease. A couple weeks ago our government was doing all it could to assure us our beef supply was safe to eat. It's factually impossible for the government to know whether our beef supply is or is not contaminated. Your Republican Reagan reduced the number of USDA beef inspectors from about 15,000 to 7,500. Only 1 in 7,000 beef carcasses is inspected in the U.S., and a far lower percentage is even tested. After the E. coli illnesses and deaths of the last few years, the meat-packing industry pulled out all stops to influence the Republican Congress to limit USDA inspection and testing of meat. When the USDA pulls inspectors out of meat-packing plants producing contaminated meat, the packers sue USDA to force them back in under Republican-passed laws that favor profit-driven rights to market contaminated meat over consumer safety. When it comes to the nation's meat supply, Republicans have a lot to be proud of: a large, economical supply of meat of predominately unknown quality and safety. Funny thing is, Jack-in-the-Box, the fast food chain that nearly went out of business because they were associated with the first E. coli death, now requires both inspection and testing of its ground beef supply, probably offering one of the safest sources of ground beef in the nation. Conversely, the USDA, under what I presume to be your favored Republican-passed laws, purchases uninspected and untested ground beef for distribution to public school food service programs and the U.S. armed forces. Way to show appreciation to our men and women at arms, eh? Feed 'em beef with the highest likelihood of contamination. Oh, and records do show that USDA purchased tons and tons of beef from packers who sold contaminated beef for these destinations. There were some convictions, resulting in nice, Republican slaps on the wrist, for knowingly selling poisoned food. It's an ironic twist that liberals are portrayed as "weak on crime", but conservatives are just as weak when it comes to doling out consequences to their friends in business, whether it's the nation's meat supply, or contaminants in animal feed, or the pollution that also contributes to contaminated feed. Guess you can get run over standing on either side of the street, politically speaking. Hence my distrust of the FDA to tell me how much PCBs or Dioxin is OK for me to eat.
(References and citations available if really needed.)


It looks to me like where farmed salmon are raised, and where the farmed salmon diet comes from are important indicators of contamination levels. Also important to note is that "hatchery" origin salmon are the equivalent of "wild" salmon in the food marketplace, since they both grow on wild food sources found in the ocean. What bothers me about this is the fact that toxic heavy metals are so widely distributed in the ocean food chain, and there is no avoiding it if I choose to eat fish. Compared to "factory" reared beef, pork, and poultry, however, I think ocean-reared salmon continues to be one of the safer foods to eat.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.