Environmentalists have disagreed that fish industry is doing fair job to reverse health advisories regarding mercury levels in fish sales. They have criticized the fish industry to help itself over the past 30 years by influencing the Food and Drug Administration to de-emphasize the significance of mercury levels in U.S. fish sales. It is said that such influence has been started in earnest in the late 1970s when the mercury content guideline in the U.S. was 0.5 parts per million.
According to the environmentalists the commercial fishing interests in US were anxious that it would be difficult for them to market all their fish in the U.S. with a 0.5 ppm mercury limit, so the U.S. fishing industry successfully lobbied the FDA to double the mercury limit for commercial fish specifically sold in the U.S. to 1 ppm. At that it was observed that this was an arbitrary change made solely due to pressure from the commercial fishing industry.
As per the record of EPA more than 300,000 babies born in the U.S. annually are at risk of brain damage due to mercury in their mother’s bloodstream. It is found that even at the point of sale there was no mention of mercury information.
