Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-10-Speech-2-308"
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"en.20040210.11.2-308"2
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".
Mr President, I wish to begin by answering some of the questions posed by Mr Ó Neachtain, because he asked who funded the report which appeared in
magazine and caused all the problems.
Few realise that the research on which the article was founded was commissioned by the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, worth an estimated USD 3.8 billion. They are well known for their international campaigns against global pollution and they have recently become influential opponents of the aquaculture industry. The
magazine article – based on a USD 2.9 million research project carried out by the Institute for Health and the Environment at the State University of New York at Albany – has, as previous speakers have said, proved to be deliberately misleading in the advice it provides on salmon consumption. And yet, I think all of us in this Chamber would be astonished at how that article suddenly appeared in newspapers all over the world. The reason is that on the day it was published in
magazine it was sent out by press release by an international PR company based in New York and simultaneously appeared on the website of the Canadian-based Suzuki Foundation, which campaigns on behalf of Alaskan wild salmon and which, of course, has a vested interest in damaging the European farmed salmon industry.
In their conclusions about limiting salmon consumption, the study's authors appear, as Mrs Stihler said, to have misapplied an already suspect risk model developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency by failing to include any analysis of the health benefits of eating salmon, despite over 5 000 scientific papers attesting to the necessity of eating oil-rich fish as a regular component of a balanced diet. The research does not actually contain any new information: the data the research provides is no different from the findings of previous studies that also found dioxin levels in farmed salmon to be well within official safety limits. However, the interpretation used in the research paper deliberately exaggerates the health risks.
Moreover, the PCB levels in all EU farmed salmon are significantly below the level determined to be safe for sale in supermarkets, even by the US Food and Drug Administration, as well as by all other international watchdogs, including our own EU Food Standards Agency and the UK Food Standards Agency. The American research is therefore seriously flawed. EU fish farms undertake rigorous inspection and quality control regimes to ensure that only the highest possible environmental and welfare standards are met and that the public is provided with an entirely safe, non-toxic and reliable product."@en1
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"Chairman of the Committee on Fisheries"1
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