New York Times Got Sushi Story Wrong
Reporting errors causing unwarranted health scare

Washington DC - The National Fisheries Institute (NFI) cautions local news outlets against planning to replicate the erroneous New York Times story about mercury in sushi and encourages reporters to contact NFI for the facts.

"We hope news outlets will not fall into the sensationalist trap that the Times did and get the facts about the science correct before they needlessly alarm people," said NFI spokesman Gavin Gibbons. "It's a lot easier to get it right the first time than it is to issue a correction."

In a letter to the Times NFI explained that its reporting is at odds with widely accepted science that tuna and other kinds of fish are a safe and essential part of a healthy diet. In addition the story grossly misrepresented federal mercury guidelines and unnecessarily alarmed readers when it failed to mention acceptable EPA/FDA mercury levels have a ten-fold safety factor. One piece of fish exceeding the federal action level does not translate into a health risk for consumers. A person would need to eat fish that exceeds the action level by ten-fold every day of his or her life to approach a mercury level of concern. The Times has already agreed to run a correction about its misrepresentation of federal mercury guidelines.

In addition, the sourcing found throughout the report is completely one-sided. Aside from the Environmental Protection Agency and restaurants whose sushi was tested by the Times, the only other quotes in the story come from sources with clear self-interests and or activist groups engaged in both lobbying and fundraising efforts against coal fired power plants, a source of mercury.

And now the fallout begins. An article that appeared in the Times on the very next day mocked the paper's own investigation with quotes from undeterred sushi eaters. While Time Magazine went further with an article titled "The Danger of Not Eating Tuna."

"I know I sound like I'm trying to downplay the risk but I really think we are experimenting with people's lives when we give recommendations or write stories or reports that make people eat less fish. We know from very good human studies that fish intake reduces the risk of dying from a heart attack by about a third. And heart attack is the number-one cause of death in the U.S. among both women and men," the magazine quotes Harvard researcher Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian.

Please visit www.aboutseafood.com for a list of independent experts in the field of seafood safety and mercury.