Oceans activists are calling for tinned tuna to be banned from hospitals , school canteens, care homes and maternity wards after high concentrations of mercury were found in every sample analysed. They accused public authorities and the tuna industry of “cynical lobbying”, favouring “the economic interests of industrial tuna fishing to the detriment of the health of over hundreds of millions of tuna consumers in Europe ”. It means that for 50 years a mercury threshold three times higher for tuna than for other fish species such as cod was set as “acceptable”, “without there being the slightest health justification for a different threshold”.
French non-profit organisation Bloom, which aims to protect marine environments, and consumer-rights organisation Foodwatch analysed 148 tins of tuna from five European countries: the UK, Germany, Spain, France and Italy. They found that all the products contained mercury, and 57 per cent exceeded the limit for fish of 0.3mg per kg.
The findings, which they dubbed “a health scandal on an unprecedented scale”, prompted Foodwatch to warn of a “colossal risk to public health”. Exposure to even small amounts of mercury may cause serious health problems, and threatens development of unborn babies and children, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which considers it a major public health concern, on a par with asbestos and arsenic. Mercury may have toxic effects on the nervous, digestive and immune systems, .