Posted on 04/18/2004 3:47:23 AM PDT by snopercod
Among the New Year’s many unappreciated gifts to the seafood industry and ultimately to every industry reliant upon nature’s resources is the $2.5 million PEW-funded study by U.S. academics claiming high contaminant levels of PCBs in farmed salmon. That well-planned and funded assault on the global seafood trade has European nations eyeing the credibility of the United States research community with the same anger and derision portrayed in the 1958 novel, “The Ugly American” authored by Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer. Imperious, incompetent, arrogant, and erroneous are reflective of the invectives being hurled at the so-called “U.S. study.”
Eastern Atlantic salmon producers see the study as an intentional insult to their industry orchestrated by North American wild salmon interests to undermine consumer loyalty to the farmed fish staple. That U.S., Canadian and Chilean farmed salmon ranked lowest in “contaminant” levels provides yet another layer of irritation to salmon farmers in Iceland, Scotland, Norway, Ireland etc. The fact is that the work is all of that and more.
The PEW-paid study was first published in the January 9th edition of SCIENCE, the flagship publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). But it is not simply an assault on farmed salmon. It is a very brash example of the multi-layered strategies facing virtually every interest that deals with nature’s resources: agricultural biotechnology, biomedical research, food animal husbandry, wildlife management, energy exploration, timber, mining, etc.
Years of seemingly isolated exercises in the courts, in the arena of public relations and media manipulation, before national legislatures, as well as NGO-oriented Foundations nurturing academic institutions and personnel are coming together as a process for social and economic change for the environmental NGO community. The fact that the PEW-financed study appeared in the AAAS publication should raise some eyebrows among NGO monitors. Former AAAS President Jane Lubchenco has long been associated with the environmental NGO community including her tenure as a spokesperson for SeaWeb, a PEW project dealing specifically with marine and seafood issues. Of late, AAAS serves as one of the academic outlets for NGO over-hyped campaigns against longline fisheries. Its role as a facilitator for the current assault on farmed salmon should not come as a surprise.
The starburst effect of activity stemming from the PCB/contaminant study is illustrative of the depth of prior planning, cooperation, and coordination behind NGO activities as well as for the range of NGO assaults other resource use industries and activities can expect this year and long into the foreseeable future.
The PEW-financed study sprang from a decidedly smaller but similar study commissioned by Canada’s David Suzuki Foundation, an NGO notoriously antagonistic toward farmed salmon from any nation. PEW is one of that organization’s funding sources.
Almost immediately after the release of the PEW/U.S. Study two NGO groups – the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) – announced they would force California’s farmed salmon suppliers to label their product with consumer warnings under the authority of that state’s Proposition 65. Proposition 65 is a seemingly innocuous law passed to promote clean drinking water and halt the spread of toxic cancer and birth defect causing substances in consumer products. In fact, Proposition 65 is a clever and irritating mechanism used by litigious NGOs and others to publicly spank politically incorrect opponents ranging from the American gun industry to seafood retailers etc.
The testing ground for that litigation was a similar move by Sea Turtle Restoration Project (STRP) and As You Sow Foundation alleging harmful amounts of mercury in swordfish fed and sold to that state’s consumers. The “study” used to activate Proposition 65 against seafood retailers and restaurants in California remains arguably one of the most scientifically shallow exercises published. The author detailed in the study a page of methodological deficiencies that undercut its scientific credibility. A forceful NGO-driven publicity campaign created the perception of accuracy for the work and, ultimately, it was deemed substantial enough to bring the force of the California legal system into play.
EWG and STRP are long time hectors against global trade in nature’s resources. CEH and As You Sow Foundation are anti-corporate creations of Proposition 65 dedicated to punishing industry via the California statute also known as the “bounty-hunter law” because it funnels Proposition 65 penalties into the whistle blowers’ pockets.
Labeling is a high priority issue among environmental NGOs. Groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc. promote labeling as a consumer right to know exercise. In fact, the argument can be made that the not-so hidden agenda behind the push for such labels is to undermine consumer confidence in various natural resource-reliant industry from genetically enhanced crops and foods to commercial fisheries and aquaculture.
In politics the saying goes that “perception is reality.” That observation applies to the NGO insistence on new labeling laws. So-called “warnings” of toxic substances in a food commodity such as salmon are designed to cause consumer despair and discourage tossing into shopping carts a package marked with the marketing equivalent of a “skull and cross bones.” Such labels imply an immediate toxic health threat posed by the consumer product when, in fact, there is no danger from such minute, trace-level amounts of the offending substances.
The PEW-financed study’s divisiveness extends to what amounts to a name-calling credibility fight between researchers involved in the study versus scientists on both sides of the Atlantic outspoken in their scorn for the work. The dynamic most prevalent is the animosity NGOs hold for corporations and global traders in general.
In truth, the study, its funding mechanism and the turmoil generated are all omens of what fisheries, aquaculture, agricultural biotech and eventually every resource-reliant industry from oil to timber will face thanks to the “self-outing” of Pew as an activist environmental NGO.
The study’s chief researcher, John Carpenter of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany’s Institute for Health and the Environment, took the initiative to beard the seafood industry press and defend his team’s methodology and objectivity. He quickly denied the $2.5 million in Pew grant money behind the study influenced his team’s work.
Still, a persuasive argument can be made that the language of the study’s conclusions as well as its findings spoke only to farmed salmon and not to wild specimens with the same “contaminants.” That selective focus strongly suggests the academics involved in writing the results of the research were indeed influenced by the NGO anti-farmed salmon agenda. The wording of the study’s conclusions lends credibility to the idea that the entire work is in deed a highly useful tool in the environmental community’s on-going effort to savage the farmed salmon industry versus an objective look at the fact that virtually all carnivorous fish contain trace amounts of potentially toxic substances.
The linguistic style of the study also underscores a basic prejudice against farmed salmon. For example, it states the “potential risks of eating contaminated farmed salmon have not been well evaluated.” The use of the descriptor “contaminated” juxtaposed with “farmed” is highly charged. It suggests the substance in question has already been judged as toxic and harmful to consumer health and that wild salmon lack “contamination.”
The authors could easily have avoided such manipulative language as their use of the phrase “contaminated farmed salmon” and substituted instead something on the order of “the presence of the compounds in question in salmon – farmed or wild caught” – to avoid prejudicing the reader.
Further evidence suggesting a bias against farmed salmon in the written report lies in its title. In the study, the authors acknowledged the presence of the same “contaminants” in both farmed and wild salmon. Yet, the study was termed a “Global Assessment of Organic Contaminants in Farmed Salmon.” Similarly, the conclusions in the report focus solely on potential health threats associated with the bioaccumulation of contaminants due to consumption of farmed salmon. No mention is made that the lesser amounts of the same compounds in wild salmon might pose similar potential health threats if they accumulate from consumer diets rich in those fish.
Any comfort Alaska’s wild salmon fishery might derive from the PEW study is destined to be short-lived in view of the ancient strategic ploy of divide and conquer. Today, so-called “contaminants” in wild salmon are being ignored or being touted as “natural” by NGO groups. Tomorrow wild salmon will be targeted for similar campaigns designed to eliminate that product’s consumer market.
Criticism of the study’s methodology, although meaningless in erasing the effects of a well-orchestrated public relations campaign that launched the promotion of the study, were immediately forthcoming from both sides of the Atlantic. The intensity of the response included media reports that Scotland’s “Scottish Quality Salmon” (SQS) and France’s Label Rouge organization are considering legal action against the American researchers who conducted the controversial study.
England’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) forcefully questioned the study’s conclusion and findings. In a series of articles, FSA stated that the findings of the U.S. study of dioxin content were no different than those in an earlier FSA work. Both studies demonstrated that the trace amount of “contaminants” were well below the tolerances allowed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Union’s Scientific Food Advisory Committee, and the UK’s Committee on Toxicity. FSA flatly contradicts the study’s authors who shunned the FDA standards in favor of those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They claimed that the EPA approach is “designed to manage health risks….” FSA challenges that premise describing the EPA standards as being in a state of “evolving since 1991” and not yet finalized.
Rejecting standards set by FDA, WHO as well as by the EU’s and the UK’s food safety scientific advisors does raise questions about the study’s methodology and credibility. Each of the rejected agencies are involved in maintaining the safety of food for humans. EPA mainly deals with issues affecting the environment such as the agricultural use of pesticides. The collegial tug-of-war among U.S. federal agencies seeking to extend their sphere of control is very real between FDA and EPA. NGOs favor the latter because that agency EPA seems more attuned to political pressure than FDA.
Dr. Charles Santerre, Associate Professor of Foods and Nutrition at Purdue University, also publicly took the “US Study” to task.
Santerre acknowledged that the study was performed by “researchers from respected academic institutions” including SUNY at Albany, Michigan State University and Indiana University. Santerre put the study’s findings in perspective. The PCB levels detected (0.06 ppm) were approximately three percent of the FDA tolerances (2 ppm). The chances of a consumer developing cancer from PCBs accumulated by consuming an 8-ounce portion of farmed salmon per week for 70 years would be 1 in 100,000.
Santerre described the same portion per week consumption of farmed salmon provides 5 times the recommended protein, vitamins, and Omega-3 fatty acids recommended for pregnant and nursing women by the National Academy of Sciences and “70 percent of the amount recommended by the American Heart Association (AHA) for cardiovascular disease patients.” Santerre offers a rather ghoulish comparison of the lives the “U.S. Study” suggests would be lost to PCB-precipitated cancer after 70 years (6000) to the estimates of the annual reduction of lives lost to sudden cardiac episodes (50,000 – 100,000).
Santerre openly acknowledges his position as a paid consultant to the industry group, Salmon of the Americas or SOTA. Similarly, Dr. David Carpenter, lead author of the “US Study” is candid in acknowledging PEW Charitable Trusts as the source of pay for his research team.
If anything, the brashness of the Pew-paid study, its multi-million dollar “no expense spared” approach, together with its instant worldwide notoriety thanks to a well-organized public relations campaign underscores the level of intensity seafood and other use oriented entities can expect from this point on in their dealings with environmental NGOs.
Yes... "multi-layered strategies" to be implemented in a "full-court-press" by "multi-level governing bodies" with another layer of "regional goverment" to control counties in rural areas. A perfect example is "The Tahoe Conservancy" as the model for the coming and huge expanse/expense of the "Sierra-Nevada Conservancy!"
No one seems to remember Byron Sher's motto in catering to the Sierra Flub... "Mining Free by '93!" Really dumb, as all wealth comes out of the danged ground!!!
This "wild salmon" proganda campaign is truly sickening. Goebells would be proud...total propaganda aimed at divide and conquer. I see the bumber stickers on the Volvo's and I recoil in disgust, God forgive them for they know not what they do.
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