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FDA Fish Recommendations Challenged

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A coalition of nutrition experts and groups, including several federal agencies, on Thursday challenged government warnings that pregnant women limit their fish consumption because of contamination.

The group is criticizing a March 2004 advisory from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) urging young children and also women who are nursing, pregnant, or who could become pregnant to limit consumption of fish low in mercury to 12 ounces, or about two meals, per week.

The advisory also recommended those groups not to eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish because they contain high levels of methylmercury. For albacore tuna, up to 6 ounces per week is acceptable.

But experts representing the coalition Thursday recommended that women eat no less than 12 ounces of fish per week. They also recommend that 6 of those ounces can be from albacore tuna.

The group criticized the government for discounting the benefits of seafood consumption. They said while some fish is contaminated with mercury, the risk is outweighed by fish’s benefits for fetal and neonatal development. But the impact of the 2004 advisory is that women are eating less fish, especially during pregnancy.

“The intent of the FDA advisory was a good intention,” said Roger B. Newman, MD, director of obstetrics at the Medical University of South Carolina and spokesman for the Maternal Nutrition Group. “The unintended consequence has really been a major public health issue."

“We’re concerned that there is, in a sense, an overreaction to those recommendations,” said J. Thomas Brenna, PhD, a professor of human nutrition at Cornell University.

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