Durbin Questions Tuna Mercury Content Levels

Chicago Tribune

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is calling on America's tuna industry to take steps to protect consumers from high mercury levels in some cans of tuna.

"The industry has to step up and restore confidence in their product," he said in an interview. "That means being honest with consumers about what is in the cans."

In a letter Thursday to leading tuna producers, Durbin questioned the industry's practice of using a high-mercury tuna species, yellowfin, to make millions of cans of light tuna, one of the nation's best-selling seafoods and a product the government has recommended as a low-mercury choice.

Citing a recent Tribune series about mercury in tuna, Durbin wrote that consumers "might be unknowingly ingesting unsafe quantities of mercury even if they are following the Food and Drug Administration's seafood consumption guidelines."

Durbin, the Senate's assistant minority leader, asked the industry to provide him with information about how often yellowfin is used in canned tuna.

A spokesman for the U.S. Tuna Foundation, a lobbying group for tuna producers StarKist, Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea, said the organization was reviewing Durbin's letter.

The industry has maintained that its customers are not at risk.

The Tribune series revealed that the industry uses yellowfin to make about 15 percent of the 1.2 billion cans of light tuna sold annually.

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