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RANCHERS / GROWERS / FARMERS

Low Mercury Tuna not Just a Headline
The Birth of Wild Planet Seafood Company

By Ellen Walsh

There's a family heritage of fishermen in Bill Carvalho's past, dating back to the middle ages in the seafood rich waters off the Azore Islands near Portugal. If you have ever traveled to Portugal you have undoubtedly ordered seafood, and noticed the difference in the naturally clean, fresh wonderful taste of their local catch. There, the local seafood industry is alive and well, filling a vast appetite for the immediate geographical area. With the Spaniards and Portuguese consuming over 100 lbs. of seafood per year per person, there is little need to create an export market. If you have an awareness of that life, and you are living on the west coast of California, you might notice what is missing from the seafood industry in America. Bill Carvalho did.

Bill McCarthy inspecting some
Northern Pacific Albacore

Living on the west coast in the northern most area of California lies a small village called Arcata. In 1990 Carvalho started a small Seafood Company. Joined by fellow seafood expert Bill McCarthy in 2000, the team perfected the market niche they wanted Wild Planet to fit into.

"We conceived of bringing to the American public a product that is superior to anything else produced in the national brand category." Says founder Bill Carvalho. " This comes from our intimate knowledge of home canning. The Portuguese people in Arcata have a tradition of canning local albacore tuna on what has become Annual Tuna Canning Day. Every year, we would go down to the boats in the fall, and buy 400 lbs. of tuna and can it. Almost every family does it. It's as Portuguese as the Pig Slaughtering day in Portugal, only it's a California Portuguese food preservation event. From early morning till late at night, the tuna is cut, packed and then pressure cooked right in the mason jar. That's how we did it all day long. The rich, natural juices and oils from tuna filled up in that jar, and that's how we ate it - right out of the jar."

Knowing how good tuna should taste, Bill developed a method of canning his own tuna that preserved the fabulous taste and the natural nutrition present in the fish. Cutting the loin strips off the tuna, slicing them into medallions, they were then packed by hand into the can. Sealed shut, pressure cooked for 70 minutes, the canned tuna comes out ready for labeling and shipping. The taste difference is apparent at the first bite.

You can eat this tuna right out of the can with a fork," says Bill. " We do, all the time. These juices you find at the bottom of the can are the fish's own natural juices, and it makes all the difference in the world when you go to eat it."

In fact a wonderful taste is not the only benefit. The specialty processing of Wild Planet produces full Omega 3 potency. This is attributable to the cooking process of the manufacturing plant.

For a full report on the Omega 3 Potency of Wild Planet Foods, click here.

Traditional national brands of tuna are fully baked prior to canning, then placed in the cans for further processing. The process leaves the tuna so dry that it is necessary to add back in a liquid, the industry preference being either oil or water. The process itself strips the tuna of a majority of its health benefits.

"We know how good seafood can be, and industrial plants can be unkind to tuna. Tuna was the most consumed fish in America. Shrimp is now the #1 consumed seafood in the United States, and tuna is now #2."

The Low Mercury Claim
"When all the information about mercury came out in the spring of '03, my family was consuming at least 400 cans of tuna a year," remarks Carvalho. "I was concerned we were being exposed to too much mercury. I thought, salmon and tuna eat the same thing in the same ocean, why is one higher than other for mercury? The life cycles of these fish are very different. Salmon are born in fresh water and travel to salt water for 3 or 4 years and go back to fresh water to spawn and die.

Yet tuna live 16 or 17 years. They breed, continue living, and that is how much mercury is in the tuna. A 3 year old fish is only 12 lbs. We sent samples of different weights of fish to our labs. Bottom line, lower weights equal less mercury content."

The United States fleet has a size policy in the north Pacific, which is the most conscientious of any fleet in the world. The fish have to be 9 lbs. or larger. They procreate at around 30 lbs, however the North Pacific Albacore has a capture rate of only 15%, leaving plenty of fish to grow and reproduce."

Wild Planet fine tunes their understanding of minimal mercury by producing two types of canned albacore: Minimal Mercury, and Low Mercury.

Minimal Mercury Albacore is just the 3 year old fish or 9 - 12 lb fish only. It is the lowest mercury count available, and there has been lots of testing. All that is added in the manufacturing process is a little sea salt. It is their number one seller. **

Low Mercury is the fish that are between 12 - 20 lbs. and it is a slightly larger fish. Just like the minimal mercury, it is cooked after you put it in the can.

Purchasing 3% of the West Coast's tuna supply, Wild Planet is considered one of the top tuna buyers in the country. Because of their sizeable export to Japan, Carvalho is able to hand select the tuna for their custom canning factory in Washington state. "We have hundreds of tests conducted by AM Test Labs in Redmond Washington that demonstrate all of our samples range very low in mercury," says Carvalho.

To be considered minimal mercury, laboratory test results must average less than 0.15 (PARTS PER MILLION) and no samples exceeding 0.3 of methyl mercury. A simpler translation of what this means to the consumer, is that the EPA reference dose is .7 micrograms per kg of body weight per week. This means, that if a 150 lb. adult eats tuna from a national brand with a mercury content of 61 mcg mercury, then that person would reach the EPA reference dose for the entire week with just 4.7 ounces, or just one sandwich.

For the entire Study Measuring the Low Mercury Claims of Wild Planet, click here.

Story continue on page 2, click here.


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