The Winding Glass

Wild Fish also implicated in Melamine contamination

Many wild fish advocates are quick to point to the melamine fish feed contamination as more evidence of the unreliability of farmed fish. But in our news, we report that the melamine laced feed went to hatcheries in both Oregon and Washington that raised chinook salmon-- and that these smolts were fed the contaminated feed.

The point here is not to trash hatchery fish -- which are considered "wild". But to say that the overall problem is bigger than wild vs. farmed. The issue of consumer trust and contamination applies to all seafood-- whether in relation to mercury in swordfish, tuna or halibut, or antibiotics and chemicals in farmed catfish and salmon.

We gain nothing by pointing fingers. We will have an editorial later today on the whole situaiton -- but food safety and economic integrity need to apply across the entire seafood industry - not just to one sector.

Melamine In Farmed Fish

We have just issued one of our few breaking news emails after a teleconference call with the USDA and FDA on contaminated fishmeal fed to farmed fish in the U.S. and Canada. The story is already going out on hundreds of media outlets.

There are two issues here: One is whether there is any health threat. The FDA says there is likely no threat, since the levels of melamine are going to be very low, and there is not yet any certainty whether fish fed this contaminated feed have entered the food supply.

But, we have all lived through food scares involving farmed fish that had huge market impacts-- i.e. the PCB scare in salmon a few years ago, that cut sales by 30% to 50% overnight.

We don't yet know the scope of this, since the FDA has not yet released, or may not release, the names of the fish farms where the contaminated feed was sold. But they are saying it went to a large number of fish farms in the U.S. and Canada.

The food scare is going to give aquaculture opponents another platform, and is something we all need to pay close attention to.

In a couple of hours, we should have a full transcript of the FDA/USDA conference call, and I will put up more information once we have it.

Melamine Contamination Scare may be more important than BSE

The new stories that will come out this week about the extent to which melamine contaminated feed made it into animals that are in the public food supply is going to have a lasting impact. I think this may be more of a big deal for consumers than BSE. Of course BSE is a real danger, where Melamine is not. But BSE has led to a very small number of deaths and it is a very long term and hard to trace disease. Further there are a lot of attempts to monitor and keep BSE out of the food supply.

But the melamine contamination has led to the deaths of thousands of pets. The FDA has catalogued over 8000 deaths, according to a news story we ran today. When consumers see their pets dying due to food contamination, and then read that the same contaminent made it into their own food supply-- it is scary, andit raises a major concern. I expect that this will lead to a decrease in consumption of any foods associated with the melamine contamination, despite the fact that no actual health risk exists. It will make people more reluctant to buy poultry, will focus more consumer concern on feed issues, and may have a bigger negative impact overall in the U.S. than the BSE issues, which have been extremely well handled.