Restaurants for Healthier Fish Initiative

The FDA has dangerously low standards for PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) that have not been retested in 20 years.  Join us to enlist restaurants, the biggest fish sellers, to support new testing and stricter standards.  To help:

  1. Download the Restaurants for Healthy Fish Letter and PCB Information Guide   
      
  2. Read over the PCB Information Guide to become familiar with the topic
  3. Bring or send the attached letter and information sheet to restaurants you dine at and ask a manager, chef, or owner to sign the simple statement that they support stricter limits for PCBs by the FDA.
  4. Once signed*, mail the letter (or multiple letters) to
               

Oceans Alert
826 Broadway 4th Floor
New York, NY 10003

*If the person at the restaurant doesn’t wish to sign it right away, give them the information sheet, which has our address, and inform them to send it once signed.

OUR GOAL

This campaign will serve as a useful tool to make restaurants more aware that their patrons are worried about the health of the fish sold. Your letters will accompany a petition to the FDA to increase the acceptable PCB level.  Your letters will form an effective public comment.   We are striving towards a health requirement certification for farmed fish, but that certification will be meaningless unless the testing limits are safe. 

The more signatures you can get the better!  Having signed support from the biggest fish sellers, restaurants, will have a large impact on our goal of farmed fish certification.

WHY ARE PCBs AND FISH HEALTH A PROBLEM?

Many people are unaware that much of the fish they eat is unhealthy.  There has been much said about the advantages of eating fish as a good protein source, or for the hard to get omega-3 fatty acids, which are both true.  What many don’t hear, however, is that many species of fish have been found to have high levels of contaminants, such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), mercury, dioxins, pesticides and antibiotics.  Most of the tuna that people consume has high levels of mercury, which causes neurological damage; much of the Atlantic salmon has dangerous levels of PCBs, which cause cancer; many farmed fish are given antibiotics, which cause doctor prescribed antibiotics to be less effective in fighting off sickness in humans. 

The FDA is responsible for ensuring the safety of fish sold commercially, both wild caught and farmed.  Their testing methods and acceptable contaminant levels are unacceptable to safeguard the fish we all consume.  They only test fish as part of a Total Diet Study, which measures the chemical content in the average diet, not in fish specifically.  The tolerance levels they administer are dangerously low, at levels that the EPA would barely recommend consumption at all.  With fish consumption on the rise, it is now time to start protecting people from these contaminants that pervade our water and the fish we eat. 

To learn more read our PCB Information Page, Pesticide Information Page, or Mercury Information Page

The above links are Adobe Acrobat documents and can be printed on any printer. If you don't have it Adobe Acrobat, click on the link below:

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Oceans Alert’s mission is to involve people worldwide to help rebuild healthy and sustainable fish populations and to restore the health of the oceans and waterways.