Salmon feeding frenzy

by Nicola Shepherd

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THE latest addition to the list of foods spotlighted by a health scare is farmed salmon.

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Scientists claim to have found unusually high levels of toxic pollutants known as PCBs,� in farmed salmon.

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PCBs in hgh concentrations are believed to harm the development of the brain in babies and children, and can be passed from mother to child�during breastfeeding,

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Farmed salmon are fed on pellets made from concentrated meal and� oil taken from the ocean's fish catches.

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This�is the same food that farm salmons' wild cousins feed on, but the concentration into pellets multiplies the tiny levels of toxins present in�the�open sea to a higher level. Of the salmon on sale in the shops, 95% is the farmed variety. The wild variety is less commonly available and more expensive.

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Guidelines from the government's food watchdog the Food Standards Agency tell us to eat more fish, especially oily fish, the recommended level being 100g, or one� to two portions per person per week.

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In spite�of the findings contained in Dr Jacobs report the FSA has not revised this advice.

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Professor Hugh Pennington, an expert on food safety and one of the first to alert the British government to the BSE crisis, says that eating one portion of salmon a week should present no hazard.

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But it has since emerged that this news isn't actually new. As far back as 1996 Greenpeace published a report that highlighted the increased levels of PCBs in farmed salmon, but government guidelines did not change.

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Dr Jacobs herself has reacted strongly to what she sees as a manipulation of the results to her findings. She says the sample was actaully too small and the findings not� definitive enough for the BBC to jump to the conclusions it has.

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But where does this leave the hapless salmon-eating British public

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