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Safeway Pressured to Post Seafood Mercury Warnings
SAN FRANCISCO, California , June 3, 2005 (ENS) - This week, with the placement of a full page ad in the "New York Times," a conservation group launched a new campaign aimed at grocery retailer Safeway for its failure to warn customers about seafood that may contain mercury.
The campaign was launched in the wake of stalled talks with upper Safeway management, which recently ended in a stalemate. Turtle Island Restoration Network is asking Safeway to expand its mercury-in-seafood health warning signs to all of its 1,802 Safeway-owned stores throughout the United States and Canada.
"Safeway should be taking a leadership role and live up to its new 'Ingredients for Life' marketing campaign by posting signs in their stores throughout the nation," says Andy Peri, Public Health Analyst for Turtle Island Restoration Network. Is mercury-contaminated fish an ingredient for 'life' or an ingredient for illness and possible death?"
Most of California's Safeway stores have warning signs at fish counters where high-mercury fish such as swordfish, shark and tuna are sold - but only in California as required under Proposition 65. Outside of California, Safeway has not posted the warning signs.
Steven Burd, CEO of Safeway, confronted by Peri at last week's Safeway's stockholders meeting, responded that there has been a lot of media attention on the issue, suggesting that additional warning signs are not needed.
Seafood consumers have written thousands of emails, letters and faxes to Safeway's CEO, Steven Burd asking him to require mercury warning signs nationwide, but the requests have not been acknowledged by Safeway management and to date, no action has been taken.
Fish collected at Safeway stores by Turtle Island Restoration Network in 2004 revealed 78 percent of samples exceeding the FDA's action level of one part per million mercury with samples reaching as high as 1.5 parts per million, 50 percent higher the FDA action level. Even fish with levels of mercury below the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) action level can cause significant harm to both children and adults.
The FDA warns women of childbearing age and mothers not to eat swordfish at all.
If a 120 pound woman were to consume eight ounces of swordfish containing 1.5 parts per million mercury, she would be exposed to more than 860 percent of what the FDA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe, the conservation group points out. Such a diet high in mercury-contaminated fish would put a nursing baby or a child in the womb at risk of neurological damage.
A new report by the Research Institute of Public Health in Finland shows a significant increase of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease and heart attacks in men with elevated mercury levels.
Fish consumers can protect themselves from mercury-contaminated fish by using an online mercury calculator at http://www.gotmercury.org . The calculator allows consumers to choose the lowest mercury fish while avoiding fish with the highest levels of mercury-contamination.
"This ad is just the beginning of our campaign to alert the public to threats from eating contaminated seafood being purchased as supermarkets. You can expect to see grassroots activists from our growing coalition of organizations in front of Safeway supermarkets in your neighborhood soon," says Todd Steiner, executive director of Turtle Island Restoration Network.
To view the ad, visit: www.seaturtles.org
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