Since 2004, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recommended that because of the potential for mercury to harm a developing fetus, women of childbearing age should eat no more than 12 ounces of fish per week, avoid such high-mercury fish as shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish altogether, and limit intake of white albacore tuna to 6 ounces per week.   

Consumer Reports, in July 2006, took a look at some new FDA data and concluded that the agency's advice on tuna was not sufficiently stringent.  We recommended that to be on the safe side, women who are pregnant should avoid canned tuna in addition to the other four types of high-mercury fish during their pregnancy.  At the same time, however, we noted that there are quite a number of fish that are so low in mercury that even pregnant women can safely eat them every day.  We urged pregnant women to choose these very low mercury fish, which include fresh wild caught and canned salmon, shrimp, sardines, clams, tilapia and pollock.

But a recent announcement from the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition flies in the face of that advice. The organization recommended that women of childbearing age, including pregnant women, “should eat a minimum of 12 ounces per week of fish like salmon, tuna, sardines and mackerel, and can do so safely.”  Consumer Reports would agree that pregnant women can safely consume salmon (as long as it is wild caught, which minimizes exposure to other pollutants) and sardines. But more than 12 ounces a week of tuna? Neither the EPA nor the FDA's expert panels, nor Consumers Union regard such amounts of tuna as safe for pregnant women.

Almost immediately, questions began to arise about this new advice.  While it had been put forward as the position of the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies coalition, which includes the March of Dimes and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it turns out that the members do not determine its positions; the group's Board of Directors does.  Indeed, a disclaimer on the HMHB Web site says, “Any statement that is supported by the HMHB Board in no way implies that it has been endorsed by our member organizations.”  And the March of Dimes, for one, does not endorse the new advice on eating fish.

Even the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Web site is inconsistent about the coalition's position.  On the site, Professor James A. McGregor, of the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, endorses the more conservative FDA advice. However, he was one of the 14 panelists who developed the new HMHB advice, and he now supports it on a linked blog.

According to the HMHB Web site, the National Fisheries Institute, an industry trade association, provided honoraria of $1,000 each to the 14 members of the panel who came up with this new advice, and also covered travel, hotel bills and food for a meeting attended by the panelists. In addition, the four-person Executive Committee received an additional $500 each for the time spent in planning the meeting. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that the NFI also gave the Coalition $60,000 for its education campaign on seafood consumption. 

Consumer Reports stands by its original position: Pregnant women and their babies can and should get the nutritional benefits of seafood by consuming low-mercury fish. They can avoid the risks of mercury exposure by not eating high mercury fish, especially shark, swordfish, king mackerel, tilefish and tuna.