CCF Serves Up Some Fishy Calculations

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) recently launched HowMuchFish.com, an online seafood calculator that claims to quantify the benefits and risks of some of America‚ favorite seafood, showing “how much fish you can safely eat.” While CCF is promoting its calculator as a tool to help consumers make healthy seafood choices, further inspection reveals some fishy calculations and misleading recommendations.

According to the Center for Media and Democracy, CCF, branding themselves as a consumer-rights group, is actually a “front group for the restaurant, alcohol and tobacco industries” In fact, the organization, formerly known as Guest Choice Network (GCN), was started in 1995 with a $600,000 donation from Phillip Morris. Since then, Phillip Morris has donated nearly $3 million dollars to GCN. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, a whistleblower revealed that past contributors to CCF include Coca Cola, Monsanto, Cargill, and seafood companies such as Coldwater Seafood, King and Prince Seafood and Save-On Seafood. In addition to CCF, Executive Director, Richard Berman, heads several other pro-industry non-profits as well as a for-profit lobbying and PR firm in Washington, DC.

In 2004, Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed an IRS complaint, alleging that CCF had violated their non-profit status. Since filing the 2004 IRS complaint, CREW launched the website BermanExposed.org, “dedicated to exposing lobbyist Richard Berman‚ activities, his myriad front groups and projects, his employees work, and his firm‚ tactics in acting in the interest of the tobacco, alcohol, chain restaurant, and tanning industries.”

Howmuchfish.com touts the benefits of consuming seafood while discrediting concerns about the negative consequences of seafood consumption, distorting EPA calculations and ignoring other potential hazards of consuming certain seafood products. Howmuchfish.com users are not asked to specify if they are a child, male, female, a pregnant female or a female planning to become pregnant. This is particularly alarming because there are various warnings regarding the possible effects of mercury on developing fetuses, infants and young children, including development of brain damage and learning disabilities, as a result of low level mercury exposure. Mercury, highly poisonous metal, poses the greatest risk to this sensitive subset of the population because their brains and nervous systems are still developing.

The calculator lists the “hypothetical health risks” associated with twelve seafood varieties, but only accounts for risks associated with mercury contamination. This narrow focus ignores all other seafood contaminants such as PCBs, dioxins, antibiotic residues and pesticides, which can seriously harm consumer health and safety.  For example, by CCF‚ standards, consumers are exposed to the same “hypothetical health risks” from both farmed and wild salmon. However, while these fish might contain similar levels of mercury contamination farmed salmon can actually contain higher concentrations of PCBs, antibiotics, pesticides, and other toxins than wild salmon.

Although Howmuchfish.com cites the EPA determination for safe levels of mercury exposure, they warp these calculations by multiplying them by a factor of 10. The EPA and FDA seafood advisories are based upon a reference dose (RfD) for mercury exposure, which includes an “Uncertainty Factor” (UF) of 10 to account for variability in mercury sensitivity within the human population. Use of an UF is standard practice in the scientific community and a detailed description of EPA‚ justification for mercury RfD calculations can be found here. Although Howmuchfish.com cites the EPA calculations, they distort EPA data by excluding the UF, therefore eliminating the margin of safety and overestimating the safety of mercury contamination in seafood.

Fortunately, consumers do have clean, green, safe and sustainable seafood options. In fact, there are plenty of fish that are low in mercury and other seafood contaminants, which have significant health benefits without the risks. Check out Food & Water Watch‚ Smart Seafood Guide for a list of sustainable fish!