any time you plan to buy from Amazon.com. Doing so gives us a 6% referral fee, which is a huge help — and easy too!
The following is an excerpt from a New York Times article from Oct. 17, 2007. Click here to read the full article. It should be noted that omega-3s can be found in flax seed and walnuts, without the risks of mercury or the devastation of "by-catch" and other harm to sea life.
Many health advocates were surprised earlier this month when a children’s health coalition that includes federal agencies and professional medical associations contradicted government warnings about mercury contamination and recommended that women of childbearing age eat more fish. Since then several coalition members have renounced the findings, some criticizing the coalition’s leadership for taking thousands of dollars from the fishing industry to promote the recommendations. The coalition’s leaders did not present the recommendations to its members before releasing them. The organization, the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, announced on Oct. 4 that women of childbearing age should eat at least 12 ounces of seafood each week, including tuna and mackerel, which can have high levels of mercury. ... [I]n an 1,800-word response to its critics, the coalition acknowledged that a member of the Maternal Nutrition Group, Dr. James McGregor, a visiting professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, had gotten the National Fisheries Institute to provide $1,000 honoraria to each of the group’s 14 members, with an extra $500 each to the group’s four executive committee members. The National Fisheries Institute also gave the coalition $60,000 for its education campaign. The coalition’s leadership said that the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller “facilitated this group sharing its findings” with the coalition and is working to promote the recommendations. Burson-Marsteller which represents the fisheries institute, had worked for the U.S. Tuna Foundation before it joined with the institute. ... “We are appalled,” said Dr. Frank Greer, chairman of the nutrition committee of theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics, a member of the coalition. He said his organization does not believe the new advice is backed up by the preponderance of science. “Plus it’s paid for by the National Fisheries Institute, which is a real conflict of interest,” Dr. Greer said. ... This is not the first time the seafood industry has given money to an outside group to talk about the benefits of its products. For example, the tuna foundation gave $45,000 last year to the University of Maryland’s Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Policy to create the Web site realmercuryfacts.org, which raises questions about studies that focus on the dangers of mercury in seafood.