Background: Mercury (Hg) is a toxic metal that presents public health risks through fish consumption. A major source of uncertainty in evaluating harmful exposure is inadequate knowledge of Hg concentrations in commercially important seafood. Objectives: We examine patterns, variability and knowledge gaps of Hg in common commercial seafood items in the U.S. and compare seafood Hg concentrations...

Seafood is part of a healthful diet, but seafood consumption is not risk-free. Seafood is responsible for an important proportion of food-borne illnesses and outbreaks in the United States. Seafood-associated infections are caused by a variety of bacteria, viruses, and parasites; this diverse group of pathogens results in a wide variety of clinical syndromes, each with its own epidemiology. Som...

World food prices hit an all-time high in February 2011 and are still almost two and a half times those of 2000. Although three billion people worldwide use seafood as a key source of animal protein, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations-which compiles prices for other major food categories-has not tracked seafood prices. We fill this gap by developing an index of gl...

Seafood consumption is in constant increase since 1960s. Though, there is diversity in seafood consumption worldwide (per capita/per year). The increase tendency of seafood consumption in the Europe can be predicted by the fact that average seafood intake among European population is around 7 kg/per year, while recommended amount is 14.5 kg.

BACKGROUND Mercury (Hg) is a toxic metal that presents public health risks through fish consumption. A major source of uncertainty in evaluating harmful exposure is inadequate knowledge of Hg concentrations in commercially important seafood. OBJECTIVES We examined patterns, variability, and knowledge gaps of Hg in common commercial seafood items in the United States and compared seafood Hg co...

BACKGROUND Seafood is the predominant source of omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for optimum neural development. However, in the USA, women are advised to limit their seafood intake during pregnancy to 340 g per week. We used the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to assess the possible benefits and hazards to a child's development of different levels of maternal s...

Empirical studies of consumer preferences for seafood ecolabels are relatively few, and typically address choices among labeled and non-labeled products of the same seafood species. Given that consumers often express strong preferences for certain seafood species, however, a more relevant assessment of consumer preferences would allow for choices among different seafood products of similar proc...

Seafood is an increasingly important source of sustenance as it provides an energy efficient, low environmental impact source of protein. New innovations and techniques have improved fishing efficiency and scale, making seafood relatively inexpensive to catch. However, this increase in volume has consequently generated a growing global concern about the environmental impacts of seafood producti...

In countries where the majority of the seafood is imported, information about seafood origin is important in particular from a food safety perspective. In the case of Belgium, no database is available describing the origin of commercial seafood products. This investigation to determine the origin revealed three important problems. First, information needed to stem from different non-related dat...

Maternal seafood intake is of great health interest since it constitutes an important source of n-3 fatty acids, but provides also an important pathway for fetal exposure to Hg. The objective of the present study was to determine associations between Hg contamination and both maternal seafood consumption and fetal growth in French pregnant women. Pregnant women included in the 'EDEN mother-chil...