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Concerns with Chinese Marine Farmed Fish (FishFax)

February 14, 2007 -- On February 7, the journal Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T) reported on a new study ("Persistent Halogenated Hydrocarbons in Consumer Fish of China," Xiang-Zhou Meng et al.) that found farmed marine fish from China contain pollutant levels high enough for the researchers to advise limited consumption. Increasingly, Chinese fish are showing up on dinner tables around the world. As the country’s fish exports boom, this new research finds that concentrations of organic contaminants in many other Chinese fish are no higher than those in fish from other parts of the world.

Snubnose pompano and crimson snapper were indicated as species of concern, while carp and tilapia showed relatively low levels of contaminants.

Eddy Zeng, an environmental chemist at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and coauthor of the study, says the analysis is “the first to systematically assess contaminants and health risks for consumption” of Chinese fish. The authors measured levels of contaminants that include pesticides, PCBs, and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants, in nearly 400 fish from Chinese markets. The fish in the ES&T study were collected around southern China’s Guangdong Province, the second-largest fish-producing region in the country.

• Read the full article in Envrionmental Science and Technology

China is important not just in terms of seafood production but also in terms of its consumption, which is projected to increase by more than 40% by 2020, according to a new seafood industry research report issued by Glitnir Bank. The ramifications of this will be enormous, reports the trade publication Fish Farming International (note: this is a subscription-only service).

Aquaculture in China - which more than tripled between 1993 and 2003 - appears to be a black box for many who assess the environmental and health aspects related to seafood traded globally. Bay scallops and tilapia are just a few of the species farmed in China that show up in North American and European markets. Groups like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Environmental Defense, Marine Conservation Society and WWF publish consumer guides to environmentally responsible seafood. These groups lament the lack of publicly available information about China's seafood production. For this reason, many of the country's fisheries and cultured fish species may not be rated at all, or end up in the red/"avoid" bin on these and other consumer guides.