UK supermarket chains have been trying to reassure consumers over the safety of farmed Scottish salmon after claims by US researchers that the fish contains dangerous levels of harmful toxins.
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UK retail firms J Sainsbury and Safeway informed customers that their salmon was within European Union safety limits, reported the Financial Times.
The salmon industry has been fighting to counter a possible consumer backlash against Scottish farmed salmon after a report in the journal Science claimed that farmed salmon contains far more harmful toxins than wild salmon, and that intake of farmed salmon should be limited.
Scottish Quality Salmon, which represents around 65% of Scottish producers, said the research was “deliberately misleading”.
“In advising how much salmon should be eaten the study ignores all the health benefits of regular farmed salmon consumption as reported in over 5,000 scientific studies,” SQS said in a statement.
Meanwhile, a toxicologist at Sweden’s National Food Administration said the report had exaggerated the danger.
“There was nothing new that came out of this study,” Per Ola Darnerud, a toxicologist at the NFA, told Agence France Presse. “They showed the same results as we’ve seen earlier… and we see no reason to issue a consumption advisory.”
The UK’s Food Standards Agency issued a statement saying that the levels of dioxins and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) found in the study were in line with those that have previously been found by the FSA and were also within up-to-date safety levels set by the World Health Organisation and the European Commission.
