On the heels of an oil spill that many people feared would cause long term damage to the environment, the Food and Drug Administration has said that consumers shouldn’t worry about the safety of fish currently on the market.
Consumers have recently grown concerned about the issue following the release photos which showed fish from the Gulf of Mexico as having deformities and lesions on their bodies. And although scientists say that this is a sign that the oil spill two years ago does have a lasting impact, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the fish on the market are unsafe.
The FDA says that if a fish really is diseased, it’s illegal to sell that fish. A spokesperson cites the relatively low number of affected fish as a reason that the public shouldn’t be scared about the threat that such seafood could pose. And as far as oil contamination is concerned, laboratories on both the state and federal levels have been busy testing 10,000-plus fish and shrimp to determine if oil could pose a threat. The FDA figures that the average consumer would need to eat five pounds of oysters or nine pounds of other seafood every day for five years for a danger to become a possibility.
As a personal injury lawyer in Long Beach, I find it incredible and disappointing that there might be safety issues two years after a disaster. I’m glad to see that testing is ongoing to keep consumers safe, and I hope as a personal injury lawyer in San Bernardino that these efforts continue.
