Spain: Mercury leads to confusion in fish consumption

Reporting to the Ministry of Health, the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (Aesan) has just updated its recommendations for fish consumption due to the presence of mercury. According to the new standards, it is asked to limit the intake of any fish to 3 to 4 portions per week in the general population and always trying to combine white and blue fish. The Aesan’s update mainly changes the indicator related to consumption in children.

For pregnant and breastfeeding women and for children up to age 10, Aesan recommends not eating fish which are high in mercury, such as swordfish, Bluefin tuna, sharks and pike. For children between the ages of 10 and 14, it is advisable to limit consumption to 120 grams per month. The previous recommendation, from 2010, advised against the consumption of these species to pregnant women and children under the age of 3; in the case of children between 3 and 12, the recommendation was 50 gram per week or 100 every two weeks.

The organization Cepesca, representing the fishing sector, supports Aesan’s role as the body responsible for “promoting healthy eating habits and ensuring the quality of food, with all health guarantees”, but thinks that the new recommendation “creates confusion” because of the communication format chosen by the health authorities. In the Aesan’s brochures and posters, Cepesca detects that the “alarmist messages” stand out above the positive recommendations, which may lead the average citizen to extrapolate the advice to all seafood products. Besides that, the sector considers the recommendation “disproportionate”.

“It is very badly explained and what this is going to achieve is that people do not eat fish”, the representative from Fedepesca, the fish retailer association, declares. This kind of information tends to cause a decline in sales of all species “because the citizen hears an alarming news and does not filter well”.

A new front in the face of fish consumption crisis in Spain is opening. According to 2018 data from the Ministry of Agriculture, per capita fish consumption stands at 23.07 kilos/year, 2.8% lower than 2017. On the other hand, meat consumption is double than that of fish, 46.19 kilos/person/year.

Asesan justifies this update due to research indicating that mercury concentrations in the Spanish population are higher than in other European countries. Specifically, it was in December 2012 when the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published that the highest levels of exposure were found in the Mediterranean countries’ diets, such as Spain, Italy, France and Greece. That exposure was more related to the type of fish than to the quantities consumed.

Despite the new recommendation, Aesan recalls that eating fish products is “ safe, healthy and advisable”.

Several sources