In China, Farming Fish in Toxic Waters

[kurth]

New York Times
December 15, 2007
In China, Farming Fish in Toxic Waters
By DAVID BARBOZA

FUQING, China — Here in southern China, beneath the looming mountains of Fujian Province, lie dozens of enormous ponds filled with murky brown water and teeming with eels, shrimp and tilapia, much of it destined for markets in Japan and the West. Fuqing is one of the centers of a booming industry that over two decades has transformed this country into the biggest producer and exporter of seafood in the world, and the fastest-growing supplier to the United States.

But that growth is threatened by the two most glaring environmental weaknesses in China: acute water shortages and water supplies contaminated by sewage, industrial waste and agricultural runoff that includes pesticides. The fish farms, in turn, are discharging wastewater that further pollutes the water supply... Farmers have coped with the toxic waters by mixing illegal veterinary drugs and pesticides into fish feed, which helps keep their stocks alive yet leaves poisonous and carcinogenic residues in seafood, posing health threats to consumers...

Environmental problems plaguing seafood would appear to be a bad omen for the industry. But with fish stocks in the oceans steadily declining and global demand for seafood soaring, farmed seafood, or aquaculture, is the future. And no country does more of it than China, which produced about 115 billion pounds of seafood last year...

“There are heavy metals, mercury and flame retardants in fish samples we’ve tested,” said Ming Hung Wong, a professor of biology at Hong Kong Baptist University. More than half of the rivers in China are too polluted to serve as a source of drinking water. The biggest lakes in the country regularly succumb to harmful algal blooms. Seafood producers are part of the problem, environmental experts say. Enormous aquaculture farms concentrate fish waste, pesticides and veterinary drugs in their ponds and discharge the contaminated water into rivers, streams and coastal areas, often with no treatment... Government records document the environmental ills in the region. The nearby Dongzhang Reservoir, a water source for agriculture and more than 700,000 people, was recently rated level 5, near the bottom of the government scale, unfit for fish farming, swimming or even contact with the human body...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/world/asia/15fish.html

[HCE SuiGeneris]

1. Used to be said eating fish was a healthful

thing to do. Now it it playing with fire...

Best to do your research and buy from known quality purveyors.

[OHdem10]

2. Months ago CNN had a report warning us to check labels

on Fish and Seafood, because often it was grown in contaminated
waters.

It came out before the Toothpaste Warning.

[Double T]

3. pathetic that contaminated seafood has become the standard.......

for what is acceptable to US seafood distributors. Why the hell Americans pay for and eat this literal 'shit' is incomprehensible to me. The US government is a failure for allowing this to happen.