More Testing of Seafood to Address Mercury Concerns

A NUMBER of restaurants and retailers in different parts of the country have started testing the fish they sell in response to concerns about the amount of mercury in seafood, and the Environmental Protection Agency is beginning to examine the mercury content in fish sold in the New York City region.

The regional office of the federal agency, which began the study because the city found high levels of mercury in the blood of New Yorkers last spring, will examine the 20 most commonly eaten fish in the region, including tuna.

Recent laboratory tests reported last week in The New York Times found so much mercury in some sushi made with tuna, particularly bluefin, that a long-term diet of even two or three pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The National Fisheries Institute, a trade association for the seafood industry, said it was sending fish sellers leaflets offering information on seafood safety. Some retailers said they also received faxes from the institute criticizing the article in The Times.

Mary Anne Hansan, the vice president of the National Fisheries Institute, said it was sending out the leaflets because “what we are hearing is a lot of consumer confusion about what to believe when it comes to seafood.” The association, she said, is letting people know about “the well-documented benefits” of seafood.

The group said that the mercury levels found in seafood eaten in the United States did not present a health risk. But many scientists suggest that it is best for people to choose fish with low mercury levels and high levels of beneficial fatty acids.

A chain of five stores in New York, Gourmet Garage, sold tuna that in the Times test had mercury concentrations above one part per million, the Food and Drug Administration’s “action level,” at which the fish can be taken off the market. The company said it would now carry only yellowfin tuna with no more than 0.4 parts per million. Yellowfin tuna is generally lower in mercury than bluefin.

The company’s seafood is tested for mercury by Micro Analytical Systems, in San Rafael, Calif. The test it uses takes only a minute, Micro Analytical Systems said, allowing it to test fish before it reaches the consumer. Other mercury tests take four to five days or longer, so the results are typically useful mostly for future purchasing decisions.

Some stores said they were not changing their patterns of ordering fish, although they noted some lessening interest in tuna sushi. At Eli’s Manhattan, on New York’s Upper East Side, sales of tuna sushi were down 30 percent in the past week, said Joe Catalano, manager of the fish department.

A spokeswoman for Wegmans, a supermarket chain with 71 stores on the East Coast, said it had been conducting its own mercury tests on swordfish and tuna for several years. The company also said it required its suppliers to test swordfish; now it will require them to test tuna as well.

Wegmans, which uses the test that takes four or five days, stops buying from any country whose fish exceeds the limit.

Legal Sea Foods, which has more than 30 restaurants along the East Coast, began testing for mercury about three years ago, rejecting anything above the F.D.A. action level. “Most of our fish is at 0.5 parts per million,” said the chain’s president, Roger Berkowitz. Now, he said, he is planning to let the public know the fish is tested.

Despite some consumer concern about mercury levels, many diners do not worry about it and some restaurants said they would not be making any changes.

At Tsunami Sushi and Sake Bar, in San Francisco, the office manager, Michaela Griner, was not surprised by the levels of mercury found by The Times.

“These things have been known for a long time,” she said. “Tuna is one of the most popular fish in any sushi restaurant. If people order it, then of course we are going to sell it.”

Kenji Tamida, general manager of Sushi Roku at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, said: “There hasn’t been any scare from consumers, no feedback from our purveyors. We serve bigeye and yellowfin, only once in a while bluefin.”

The restaurant Megu Midtown has been selling Kindai tuna, farm-raised bluefin, for several months. In the fall the public relations company for Megu claimed that Kindai tuna was “almost completely mercury-free.”

For its study, The Times ordered two pieces of Kindai tuna from the Midtown Megu in October, and a laboratory analysis showed that they contained mercury at levels of 0.79 and 0.87 parts per million.

Hiro Nishida, the president of Food Scope America, which owns Megu, said he was not surprised. The average concentration of mercury in Kindai tuna is 0.6 parts per million, he said, but producers are “trying to decrease the parts per million to 0.2 by different feeding, and they will become much healthier to people who enjoy tuna.”

Speaking of tuna in general, he added, “If you eat the appropriate portion you should not consider it a problem.”

Originally published on 1/30/2008 by Marian Burros at The New York Times website here.