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Great Lakes
Article:
New Labels Help You Have Your Fish and
Eat It, Too
Cornell University Press Release
Published December 23, 2005
Newswise — To help consumers make informed choices about
fish -- which is protein rich and heart healthy but may
harbor chemical contaminants -- Cornell Professor Barbara
Knuth serves as a scientific adviser to Seafood Safe,
a new voluntary fish-labeling program for companies, retailers
and restaurants.
"The program uses certified, independent laboratories
to test for environmental pollutants, particularly mercury
and PCBs, in fish," says Knuth, professor and chair
of natural resources at Cornell. She has been researching
risk communication, risk perception and risk management
associated with chemical contaminants in fish -- and the
policy processes related to these risk-management approaches
-- for almost 20 years.
Knuth advises Seafood Safe to help develop methodology,
standards and labels on how to communicate a product's
risk to consumers. The labels indicate how many meals
consumers can consume of the product each month without
being exposed to dangerous levels of contaminants. The
labels use standards derived from Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) guidelines.
Seafood Safe was founded in early 2005 by Henry Lovejoy,
president of EcoFish, a New Hampshire-based company that
produces frozen fish dinners with sustainable harvested
seafood and is sold to natural food stores. The program
will be launched to the fish industry at large during
2006.
Knuth, who authored a major risk communication guidance
document still used by the EPA to develop fish-consumption,
health-advisory programs, is also the past president of
the American Fisheries Society and its water quality section.
She has served on the board of technical experts of the
Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the Great Lakes Science
Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission and
on National Research Council committees on implications
of reducing dioxin in the food supply, improving the collection
and use of fisheries data and review of recreational fisheries
survey methods.
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