World: Canned tuna contaminated with mercury

Canned tuna is widely contaminated with mercury, a substance harmful to health. The alarm was raised by the NGO Bloom, which, together with Foodwatch, is calling for the adoption of "urgent measures", including the lowering of the authorised limits. Bloom randomly selected 148 cans from five European countries (France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy) and had them analysed by an independent laboratory. The result is that "100% of the cans are contaminated with mercury", the investigation reveals. Moreover, in more than half of the cans, the mercury content exceeded the maximum limit established for other fish species such as cod or anchovies, i.e. 0.3 mg/kg. For tuna, the limit was set at 1 mg/kg, a limit calculated on the "fresh product". However, according to Bloom’s calculations, this equates to a level of around 2.7 mg/kg in canned foods, because mercury is more concentrated once the product has been dehydrated. “The way in which health standards have been set at ...